A NABITA Tip of the Week
Improving a Behavioral Intervention Team (BIT) can be challenging. Drafting and revising policies and procedural manuals and presenting these initiatives to faculty, the Board, and the community requires a thoughtful approach. NABITA’s comprehensive and curriculum-based training programs and tools and TNG’s expert consulting services can support these goals.
We spoke with NABITA member Autumn Scott, Vice President of Student Development at Carl Sandburg College, about her experience working with NABITA and TNG to address these challenges. She shared how our consultants helped her college move from a reactive behavioral intervention approach to a proactive one. By aligning team members with consistent expectations and training while leveraging state funding, they successfully transformed their model of student care. Autumn explained why the NABITA model was a great fit, how they secured funding, and how it has enhanced her work on campus.
Tell us about Sandburg. What is it like?
We are a community college located in Galesburg, Illinois, and we do not have residential housing, which means our students are commuters. Despite this, we have a dynamic and engaged student body, with numerous student organizations, student-athletes, and active academic cohorts. Like many institutions, our balance between in-person and online classes shifted significantly after COVID. This caused us to rethink how we serve our students. We’re working hard to ensure our support model addresses the needs of all our learners—dual-credit, full-time and part-time, adult learners, recent high school grads, online, in-person—the list goes on!
How did the college manage behavioral intervention and threat assessment prior to engaging with NABITA?
Before partnering with NABITA, the public safety department led our BIT. Their goal was threat assessment and violence prevention—responding only to what they saw happening on campus. While law enforcement’s threat assessment expertise is valuable to any campus, we realized we needed to support our students. The BIT was not operating effectively, lacked transparency, and received few referrals. This indicated that many students needing help could be slipping through the cracks. It was clear to us that our community deserved a more effective and proactive approach.
How did you conclude that NABITA was a good fit for your institution?
As a small institution, we don’t have the capacity to have separate teams for threat assessment and behavioral intervention. For us, these two functions needed to be one. I began searching for resources to help us transition to that model. I discovered NABITA through our institution’s ATIXA membership while looking for Title IX resources. It quickly became apparent that NABITA offered everything we needed.
How have NABITA’s trainings and resources impacted your work on campus?
Our team has had an excellent experience working with our regional representative to bring related NABITA training sessions in person to our campus over multiple dates. The comprehensive curriculum included an on-site delivery of NABITA’s Behavioral Intervention Team Standards & Best Practices certification course, followed by the NABITA Risk Rubric certification course. To ensure consistency and proficiency, we required all team members to complete these trainings, and we immediately integrated the Risk Rubric Tool into our process.
NABITA’s resources, especially the Risk Rubric, have been highly beneficial. They’ve equipped our team to assess cases and deliver interventions more effectively. Every team member brings a laminated copy of the Risk Rubric to meetings, creating a shared terminology. It’s become embedded in our agenda and the way we approach cases.
Everyone on this team has a heart for serving students and wants to be as helpful as possible. It’s easy to get emotions tangled up in how we think about a case. The Risk Rubric helps us center and focus on the facts, observed behaviors, and resources. It helps us stay consistent and objective, and most importantly, it helps us support our students more appropriately. Incorporating NABITA’s Industry Standards into our on-site training and consulting services has provided clear guidance and a proactive, best-practice framework for behavioral intervention.
What model of proactive support did NABITA suggest?
I brought in NABITA early on to help establish our CARE (Coordination, Assessment, Response, & Education) team, which officially launched in January 2024. Since March 2024, we’ve been working closely with NABITA, completing trainings, and developing our procedure manual. Their resources were instrumental in drafting our Board-level policy on behavioral intervention.
Our CARE team’s goal is to receive case referrals as early as possible. If a student is struggling, we want to assess the risk while providing timely interventions to support them. Ideally, we want to address issues before they escalate to the point of violence prevention or removing a student from campus. We would rather work at the lower end of the risk spectrum.
Our Chief Safety Officer, who is a member of our CARE team, is new to the college and hasn’t experienced the previous model. He has a law enforcement background; threat assessment is part of his training, and he’s done that for a long time. But he knows from law enforcement that the best prevention is interacting with someone early on to resolve problems at a lower level rather than waiting until they escalate into more aggressive or violent behavior. This perspective makes him a strong advocate of the model we now have.
How did you align the rest of the campus to this new behavioral intervention model?
Our campus was very receptive to the proactive CARE team model. We conducted presentations for staff and faculty to inform them about the new approach and how they can make referrals. We also went to the Faculty Assembly and presented to our Student Development division. Our community recognizes this as a best-practice, student development-focused approach rather than a reactive one. Our next wave of information sharing will involve posting this on our website and direct campaigns to students.
Who is on your CARE team?
Seven people sit on our CARE team. As Vice President of Student Development, I lead the team and oversee conduct issues and student support. Our Vice President of Academic Services provides input from an academic perspective. The Vice President of Institutional Resources ensures strategic institutional alignment and Title IX support. Our Accessibility Coordinator focuses on disability support, and our Director of Student Leadership & Engagement manages student organizations and campus concerns. Though we’re a non-residential campus, she plays a role similar to Residential Life by staying connected to student life. Our Chief Safety Officer prioritizes campus security, and our Counselor provides mental health support and intervention expertise.
Can you detail the steps you went through to get funding?
We received state funding through the Illinois Mental Health Early Action on Campus Act. This state appropriation allows institutions to implement new proactive and preventive mental health strategies so students can remain in school and graduate rather than drop out due to mental health challenges.
The state provided this funding as a one-time allocation for that specific fiscal year, and we saw it as an opportunity to invest in our CARE team model. We realized that NABITA was an excellent resource to support our new model. The timing of the funding and our goals aligned perfectly.
What are your CARE team’s plans for the future?
NABITA’s resources and training have given us a good foundation to continue to grow and develop our CARE team. Our partnership with NABITA has been a way to stretch those state dollars as far as possible. As NABITA members, we’ve also been able to access resources, stay informed by the listserv, and continue to support our team through ongoing training. We’ve gained so much from that initial investment.
We plan to provide ongoing training for stakeholders to better understand the CARE team’s role. We emphasize that this is a supportive model. The CARE team focuses on support, early intervention, and risk assessment, not punitive measures. Cases involving potential Code of Conduct violations are referred to other processes, but the CARE team is here for support. No incident is too minor to report—we’d always prefer to know sooner rather than later.
This distinction helps faculty, staff, and students feel comfortable making referrals and ensures students don’t feel scared when contacted by the CARE team. It’s not about punishment; it’s about someone caring enough to refer them and us wanting to help. Moving forward, our work focuses on building that awareness.
We’re proud of the significant progress in our operations since engaging with NABITA—far beyond where we’d be otherwise.
NABITA’s expert consultants can help elevate your team’s expertise and strengthen your behavioral intervention approach with on-site support. They provide customized, comprehensive curricula designed to meet the needs of schools, districts, and institutions. They can also assist in exploring grant opportunities available in your state, helping you identify the best options or craft a compelling grant proposal. To connect with a NABITA consultant, contact inquiry@tngconsulting.com.