Threat Assessment in Practice

Join us in Dr. Brian Van Brunt’s hometown of New Orleans for a unique, hands-on two-day training that takes threat assessment beyond theory and into practice. Designed for BIT/CARE and threat assessment professionals, as well as those in student conduct, Title IX/VI/ VII, this course offers an interactive, small-cohort experience in a relaxed, authentic New Orleans setting.

Drawing on years of experience training hundreds of campus and workplace teams across the country, Brian and the DPrep Safety team developed this program to address one of the most significant challenges in our field: building confidence and skill through real-world practice.

Learn more at https://www.dprepsafety.com/vramasterclass

What to Expect

• Live Actor Interviews: Work with professional actors portraying subjects in two complex threat cases with intersections in student conduct, disability services, Title IX, Title VI/VII, HR, law enforcement, and campus safety.
• Case-Based Learning: You’ll review case details, form a team, gather intelligence (including social media), and conduct structured interviews.
• Applied Teamwork: Collaborate with your cohort to analyze the threat, assess risk, and create a tailored mitigation plan using strategies relevant to your own institution or workplace.
• Rotating Experiences: Across two days, participants rotate through different interview roles and scenarios, developing agility in handling personalities, defensiveness, and complex case dynamics.

Deliverables

By the end of the course, each team will submit two completed threat reports. These will be reviewed with detailed feedback, and Brian will share aspirational model reports for comparison, helping you sharpen your professional documentation skills.

This is not a conference or a lecture. It’s an immersive, real-world practice lab in one of the most vibrant cities in the country. Walk away with stronger interviewing, analysis, and mitigation skills you can immediately apply to your own cases.

** If you cannot travel to New Orleans, Zoom access will be provided **

Meet Ella Moreau

This tough-as-nails student can take care of herself. She is insightful and challenging in the classroom as she studies mortuary science and dreams of opening a funeral business, building on the idea of renewable and sustainable burial processes that involve placing the body into the ground to nourish a tree. There have been recent concerns in the classroom and on social media regarding some frequent and slightly gruesome posts related to her criticism of the existing funeral business model. This recently escalated into a threat against her professor, which came to the attention of the CARE/BIT team and local police.

Meet Professor Dusty Harrington

A middle-aged psychology professor has become increasingly disorganized and unclear in his lectures. He mentions topics of suicide and death in relation to the current political climate. Students find his lectures increasingly hard to follow and off topic. Staff and colleagues give Professor Harrington a wide berth due to his eccentricities. However, recent discussions related to his extremist views on the Middle Eastern conflict in Gaza and his warnings about an approaching apocalypse have caused Human Resources and the University Threat team to put the professor on temporary leave to be assessed for safety. There are requests for a threat assessment, a psychological assessment, a level of care determination (involuntary hold), and a determination of fitness to return to campus.

Materials Provided

• Video access to the two-day threat course in New Orleans in October. For cohort members who are unable to attend the in-person training in October, Zoom access will be provided.
• Individual access to Pathways and DarkFox systems for one year

New Orleans | Monday-Tuesday October 20th and 21st

10:00 - 5:00 CT with an hour break for lunch

Your Instructor

Brian Van Brunt, EdD, is the Director of Behavior and Threat Management for D-Prep Safety and the President of the Workplace Violence Prevention Association. Author of over a dozen books, Brian has spent time as a child and family therapist, university professor, assistant deputy director of training at Secure Community Network, partner at TNG, and president of the National Association for Behavioral Intervention and Threat Assessment (NABITA). He is an internationally recognized expert in behavioral intervention, threat assessment, crisis preparedness, mental illness, and instructional design. Brian has provided consulting services to schools, colleges, and universities across the country and abroad on a wide variety of topics related to student mental health, counseling, campus violence, and behavioral intervention.