A program is scheduled for this afternoon to celebrate the opening of the University of Northern Iowa’s Center for Violence Prevention. Annette Lynch is director of the center, which is housed on the Cedar Falls campus but also serves the University of Iowa and Iowa State University.
Lynch says the center’s goals involve making sure the school’s sexual misconduct policies are clear and the response to victims effective. “And also that we provide prevention education to students so we decrease the amount of violence happening on campus,” Lynch said.
The center has been awarded roughly $2.5-million in grants over the past decade. Lynch says education majors at U.N.I. will be able to take classes at the center. “So teachers that graduate from UNI will go into schools able to do violence prevention work within their regular jobs throughout Iowa,” Lynch said.
Future police officers, social workers and others could also take classes at the center. Lynch says the UNI Violence Prevention Center will work closely with the Sioux City based Waitt Institute – a private foundation focused on reducing violence in Iowa’s K-12 schools.
“They have been doing the same kind of work in the public schools system for the past 10 years,” Lynch said. “So, we are actually hiring a consultant from the Waitt Institute who will be working with me in the center as the director of the Mentors for Violence Prevention Institute.”
U.N.I. President Ben Allen and Senator Chuck Grassley are among the scheduled speakers at the opening event, set for 1:30 p.m today.
See more info here: www.uni.edu/cvp <http://www.uni.edu/cvp