Risk and Prevention

Director's Message

Mandy Savitz-Romer
Lecturer on Education
Director of Risk & Prevention Program

Creating schools, classrooms and support services that promote positive social and emotional development, while also holding students to high standards, is a shared responsibility. Today, teachers, principals, program developers and most directly, school and community-based counselors play a vital role in helping children and adolescents prevent and manage the social and emotional issues ever apparent in their lives.

The central mission of the R&P program is to prepare graduates with the skills necessary to promote positive, healthy development and academic achievement. By drawing on human development and educational theory, research and public policy, the Risk and Prevention program is a unique opportunity for students to explore risk and resiliency within the cultural contexts in which they occur.

I hope you find that our website provides answers to most of your questions. I’d like to highlight a few things that make our program especially unique.

• The focus of our program is on prevention. Working from the knowledge that risk (individual risk-taking behavior and environmental risk factors) can contribute to academic and developmental difficulties, our students learn strategies for reaching students through counseling, research, program development and consultation with parents and school staff.
• Our program is multidisciplinary in nature. The Risk and Prevention Program utilizes a wide range of human development theory and research to inform the training of prevention and intervention specialists for school and community settings.
• R&P serves a wide range of people. We draw a diverse student body with an interest in playing a direct role in the social and academic development of children and adolescents. As counselors, teachers, direct service providers, volunteers, program developers, and school and community leaders, each of our students brings a unique and valuable perspective to the learning process.
• This program is practice-oriented. The driving force behind R&P is a year-long practice or research experience that provides real-world application of content and skills acquired through interdisciplinary coursework. The practica and research experiences address the problems and possibilities encountered from infancy through adolescence.
• Risk and Prevention includes options. Our program offers a second year of graduate study for R&P students interested in professional licensure. This structural sequence allows us to offer an option for those students interested in deepening their professional practice through increased field experience and expanded content courses, while at the same time keeping a one-year option open to educators and service providers.
• The R&P faculty are the program's greatest strength. Serving as core teachers and advisors, they are engaged in research and practice that address the social, emotional and academic barriers facing at-risk students. In addition to influencing instruction, faculty research projects serve as excellent training opportunities for our students.

I invite those of you interested in learning more about the Risk and Prevention Master’s and CAS degree programs to peruse our website and learn more about our program, faculty and students. Please feel free to direct questions or comments to R&P program coordinator, Alicia Redemske.