Sept. 16, 2005, Findlay, Ohio – Approximately 70 education majors at The University of Findlay will participate in a school safety and security training session on Wednesday, Sept. 21 at UF.

UF’s School of Environmental and Emergency Management (SEEM) will lead the session.

The majority of the students are juniors in the University’s College of Education.

According to Dr. Melissa Cain, dean of the College of Education, the training session is a way to be proactive about school safety and to prepare future teachers for today’s educational environment. “We want our students to be prepared to assist in emergency preparedness, and violence prevention as well as environmental safety in the school districts they will serve,” explained Cain.

The 90-minute, interactive training session will focus on:

Measuring a school district’s vulnerability to violence and incidents that impact the safety of students;

Methods that can be used to prevent school violence;

Responding to school safety threats, including how to properly handle a bomb threat; and

Assessing the mental health impact an incident of violence can have on students, and knowing how to treat the short and long-term mental health effects.

Randal Van Dyne, executive director of SEEM, said this training session is one of the first of its kind in the state of Ohio. “We believe that it is way past time to start educating future teachers while they are still in college about the issue of school violence prevention and safety and other aspects of emergency response,” said Van Dyne.

Van Dyne added that violence in the classroom is an ongoing, significant concern to schools across the country. According to the U. S. Department of Justice, each year 35,000 students bring guns into their classrooms, 160,000 students skip school to avoid physical abuse, 6,250 teachers are threatened with bodily harm and 260 teachers are victimized by their students.

For more information, contact Rebecca Shell, public relations officer, at 419-434-4345 or shell@findlay.edu.