PUBLICATIONS Inside Illinois Vol. 27, No. 5 Sept. 6, 2007

Emergency dean on call for campus 24-7

By Sharita Forrest, Assistant Editor
217-244-1072; slforres@uiuc.edu

The more than 40,000 students attending the UI’s Urbana campus for the fall  semester will face a variety of challenges and pressures, everything from personality conflicts with roommates to dealing with the stresses of jobs, class projects and carving out a place in the social milieu. And some of them will face illnesses – their own or family members’  – and innumerable other minor and major life events that may impact their academic performance, moods or physical well being.

“The Virginia Tech tragedy raises our consciousness of the dynamic environment in which we work,” C. Renee Romano, vice chancellor for student affairs, wrote in a recent e-mail message to the campus community. “Let’s all keep our eyes and ears open and get our students the help they need, when they need it. The emergency dean is an excellent resource when someone becomes concerned about a student’s safety and well being.”

The emergency dean program, sponsored by the Office of the Dean of Students, is available 24 hours a day, 365 days a year to help assess problematic situations affecting students and arrange appropriate assistance for them when they need it.

The emergency dean can assist students in a variety of ways, whether it’s helping a student find housing in a pinch; attempting to locate students in the event of family emergencies such as death, illness or accident; or helping arrange appropriate intervention for a student who may be a potential risk – but not in immediate danger – of harming himself or others.

Professional staff in the Office of the Dean of Students are available between 8:30 a.m. and 5 p.m. Monday through Friday and are on-call at all other times as emergency dean, to provide information and follow-up services to students and their families in emergency and non-emergency situations and serve as a resource for UI and community law enforcement agencies, hospitals and crisis centers.

The people staffing the program have been trained to determine the appropriate resources to call upon, and they are backed by an extensive network of university counselors, health care professionals, academic advisers, police officers and other professionals who can directly assist students.

In non-emergent situations, faculty and staff members can contact the emergency dean at 333-0050 any time with their concerns. If the student is an immediate danger to himself or to others, faculty and staff members should call 911 as they would in any crisis situation.

The emergency dean program has been operating at Illinois for more than 30 years.

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