Portland State University

A Portland State University professor landed a $750,000 federal grant to create a national model to help colleges and universities prevent sexual assaults on campus.

(Mike Zacchino)

The federal government has given a Portland State University professor a $750,000 grant to design a comprehensive and replicable manual to help colleges and universities stop sexual assaults before they occur.

Keith Kaufman, a psychology professor, applied for and was awarded one of two grants through a U.S. Department of Justice program on monitoring and tracking sex offenders. Kaufman's co-investigator on the project, Sarah McMahon, is the associate director of the Center on Violence Against Women and Children at Rutgers University.

Their proposal involves working with eight public and private universities across the country, including PSU, Linfield College and Portland Community College, to develop a sexual assault prevention manual.

The $750,000 project is the latest example in a trend of higher education institutions, both in Oregon and across the country, investing more time, resources and attention in an effort to identify safety risks on campus and find new ways to take preventative action.

PSU hired a full-time sexual violence prevention coordinator this fall. The University of Oregon announced a similar hire, devoting a staffer to focus on creating a comprehensive plan to respond to and prevent sexual assaults on campus.

Kaufman said the national attention is "a long time coming," citing the White House's move in 2014 to create a Task Force to Protect Students From Sexual Assault.

The multi-year effort will include an effort to focus on what Kaufman described as "situational interventions" on campus - which could mean when buildings should be locked or unlocked, where evening activities or classes are held, the role of alcohol on campus and other matters.

"We'll be looking at what are the existing risks on campus that we can identify in a preventive and proactive fashion," Kaufman said in an interview.

The research process will include drilling down on various departments at PSU, PCC and Johns Hopkins University - athletics, housing, diversity, safety and the Greek system for example - and working with faculty and staff at those schools to identify risks that are specific to each department.

From there, the researchers hope to present practical and sustainable solutions to address those risks and how to implement specific changes.

That will form the backbone of a draft manual which Penn State University, Fairleigh Dickinson University, Catholic University, Linfield, and Northern VA Community College will test and then review to offer suggestions.

"At the end of three years or so, we hope to have a prevention approach that's sustainable, that will be based in a manual that can be used by any university in the country," Kaufman said.



-- Andrew Theen

atheen@oregonian.com

503-294-4026

@andrewtheen