The nation’s leading education technology innovator, EVERFI, Inc. celebrated Juniata College’s leadership in prevention education through the presentation of the Prevention Excellence Award. The award recognizes Juniata College’s commitment to adopting the highest standards in sexual assault prevention education.
The celebration for the award will take place from 3:30 on Tuesday, Sept. 26 at Juniata College’s campus.
“We appreciate the recognition inherent in the EVERFI award and are proud of the measures we take as a College to combat interpersonal violence,” says Juniata College president James A. Troha. “What makes Juniata’s approach unique and successful is the empowerment of people to use their voice and actions to create substantial changes. From students like senior Ellie Hainsworth, who leads healthy relationship programming in the Safe Place to Talk (SPoT) and junior Amy Chen, who is establishing Juniata’s affiliate of It’s On Us to senior Dallas Ricker, who founded the Juniata Men’s Group, many interested individuals across campus have engaged in prevention efforts.”
Colleges and universities that have joined the Campus Prevention Network are eligible for consideration to receive the award through completing the Sexual Assault Diagnostic Inventory (SADI)–a comprehensive research-based assessment of a school’s prevention programs and practices grounded in a decade of peer-reviewed literature on best practices in prevention. Awardees were selected based on their SADI scores, Campus Prevention Network staff interviews with campus professionals and a careful review of each institution’s effort.
“With so much recent emphasis on the shortcomings in campus prevention and response efforts, EVERFI aims to shift the narrative by highlighting campuses doing exemplary work,” said Rob Buelow, EVERFI Vice President of Prevention Education. “The Prevention Excellence Awards give us the opportunity to share and celebrate the tremendous commitment these institutions are making and continue to make in comprehensive, data-driven, evidence-based, and researched informed prevention efforts to build communities that encourage students to thrive.”
Juniata seeks to create a safe, respectful, and healthy campus for all students. The College’s Title IX staff are all professionally trained by nationally recognized Title IX experts like the Association for Title IX Administrators, the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, and Magna Publications. Juniata also utilizes EVERFI’s HAVEN, an online training course on understanding sexual assault, to train students, faculty and staff.
Of the eighty-nine colleges and universities that have completed the SADI, fewer than ten percent earned the distinction of being a Prevention Excellence Award honoree. Buelow further noted, “The Prevention Excellence Awards are particularly special because we do not ask schools to compete against each other, but rather to commit to doing the best work possible in the core areas of institutionalization, critical processes and policies, and programming, and to measure themselves against the highest standards in the field.”
About the Campus Prevention Network
The Campus Prevention Network, is a nationwide initiative of over 1,700 institutions dedicated to creating safer, healthier campus communities. Any college or university may join CPN free of charge by agreeing to take a pledge to adopt the highest standards of prevention related to critical health and safety challenges, including sexual assault and alcohol abuse, and to assess the progress and impact of their efforts. Through the Campus Prevention Network, colleges and universities will have access to prevention best practices, regulatory compliance expertise, ongoing professional development, and groundbreaking prevention research. Campuses can join the network and take the pledge here.