Nearly one year after a fatal shooting that left a professor dead and sent the UNC-Chapel Hill campus into an hours-long lockdown, the university now expects all faculty to complete active-shooter and emergency training.
Faculty were informed of the new expectation in an email from Provost Chris Clemens Tuesday afternoon, according to the message obtained by The News & Observer. The email said the online training would be available beginning Wednesday.
In an interview with The N&O Thursday, Darrell Jeter, the university’s emergency management and planning director, confirmed that faculty are being asked to complete the training ahead of the fall semester beginning in mid-August.
“The expectation is that the training is completed before the first day of class,” Jeter said. “And the expectation that is being conveyed there is that all faculty, particularly faculty that are instructors-of-record for the fall semester in classrooms on campus, will complete that training.”
The move to implement new training comes about two months after a post-shooting “after-action report,” issued by an independent agency to the university in May, recommended such training be required for all faculty and staff, among other recommendations.
But calls for the university to implement required training date back much farther.
The university has not previously required training for faculty, despite receiving a recommendation in a 2020 internal audit to do so, as The N&O first reported. Some UNC students recounted to The N&O in the days following the Aug. 28 shooting that they felt their professors were not prepared for the emergency.
Former Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz, who left UNC in January to become president of Michigan State University, first publicly stated that university leaders would consider requiring training last September — nearly 11 months ago. He told The N&O prior to leaving UNC that he supported requiring training, but it remained unclear “how that would ultimately be implemented.”
Interim Chancellor Lee Roberts said in January he would wait for the report to be issued before weighing in on whether he believed training should be required. Noting there can be “resistance” to mandatory trainings, Roberts noted at the time that emergency training “might be an exception to that.”
Asked by The N&O about the length of time it took for the university to implement required training, Jeter said university leaders wanted to be “thoughtful” about the process.
“When we’re talking about providing training to a whole group of our population, we have to be thoughtful about the mechanism by which we can achieve that and what the ultimate objective of that is,” Jeter said.
How the training will work
Clemens informed faculty in the email Tuesday that on Wednesday they would be assigned to complete a 25-minute, virtual training “for how to handle emergencies in a classroom.”
Professors are “strongly” encouraged to complete the training in the next two weeks, ahead of the fall semester beginning in mid-August, Clemens stated in the message.
“As instructors in our classrooms, our students look to us to lead them when something unexpected happens,” Clemens wrote. “I realize this expectation can be intimidating, but preparing yourself ahead of time with this training and familiarizing yourself with the classroom before teaching are two ways you can be successful.”
The training is being offered via Carolina Talent, an online human-resources platform at the university. Once they complete the training, faculty will self-certify on the platform that they have done so.
Teaching assistants are encouraged to complete the training before the new semester begins, but will not have to certify they have done so, Jeter said.
Jeter said similar training will eventually be implemented for other staff across the university who are not instructors, but leaders wanted to prioritize training for faculty ahead of the new academic year. He did not provide an estimate of when the staff training might be available.
“This specific training is specifically targeting instructors. It is not intended for staff,” Jeter said. “So this is the first phase of multiple phases of developing similar training for other audiences of our campus and the next phase is we’ll be looking at having something similar that is packaged and targeted to our staff.”
Frequency of training
Asked about potential consequences faculty could face if they do not complete the training, or do not do so by the beginning of the academic year, Jeter said leaders will be able to track how many faculty complete it. But he indicated he doesn’t believe such issues will arise or be widespread.
“I would hesitate to look at it from the angle of how people might be avoiding completing the training, because that’s just not what I’m hearing,” Jeter said. “I’m not hearing from our faculty that they don’t want to complete the training [or] they don’t want to have this information. They just want it presented and provided in a way that is consumable for them, understanding the other responsibilities that they have.”
In addition to covering active-shooter situations, Jeter said the online training for faculty also provides information about other emergencies that may occur during classroom instruction, such as natural disasters, fires and medical emergencies.
Jeter did not expressly say whether the training would be an annual requirement for faculty, but said emergency preparedness is “not just a one-time thing.”
“Refreshers are always beneficial, and we certainly are going to be looking at how can we make available options for refreshers on an ongoing basis,” Jeter said.
Voluntary, in-person emergency training provided by campus police will remain available upon request, as was already the case prior to last August’s shooting. UNC Police Chief Brian James told The N&O in May that his department saw a noticeable increase in the number of people who requested and participated in the training after the shooting, with 93 sessions conducted in the 2023-24 academic year.
Ahead of the one-year anniversary of last fall’s shooting, Jeter said university leaders wanted to be cognizant of the trauma that many on campus experienced, and how the training could bring some of those emotions back.
“We’re hopeful that the manner that we’re doing it is in a way that is respectful of the fact that people have been managing this in different ways and it is still a stressful experience for them,” Jeter said, “and in some cases, even a reminder of the tragedy, sometimes, that we’re forced to face.”
