Researchers at the University of Missouri are using a $2 million grant from the Department of Justice to help identify and avert threats students or others may make on school grounds involving potential harm to themselves or others.

The grant uses technology software to alert suicidal or harmful threats to trained school intervention teams.

The project, which will partner with up to 26 rural school districts throughout Missouri, will be fully implemented by the fall of 2023 and connect to the schools’ Wi-Fi servers to monitor online activity or threatening language or images.

“If a potential threat is captured through videos, text messages, emails or social media posts, the school would be alerted so potential assessments and interventions can happen to avoid anyone harming themselves or others,” stated Keith Herman, the grant’s primary investigator and a Curators’ Distinguished Professor in the MU College of Education and Human Development. “The other key component is creating threat assessment teams, which could include school principals, teachers, school resource officers, school psychologists, counselors, social workers and law enforcement individuals, as we will be training them on how to respond and intervene.”

“Rural schools tend to have less resources in these areas and we have heard from many rural Missouri school districts that they currently don’t have these threat assessment teams and systematic procedures in place. So we want to help implement these resources to support their schools and communities,” Herman stated.

Herman is co-director of the Missouri Prevention Science Institute and National Center for Rural School Mental Health, co-developer of the Boone County Family Access Center of Excellence and a board member for the Boone County Schools Mental Health Coalition.