USU Sees Success in Sexual Misconduct Prevention Trainings

The Utah State University Office of Equity announced a 99% overall completion rate for student sexual misconduct prevention training during the fall 2022 semester, along with survey results that show student knowledge about university resources and reporting processes is increasing.

The university requires all students who are enrolled in a non-certificate degree-granting program for at least 6 credit hours per semester to complete training each academic year. Students must finish the fall training before registering for spring semester.

All incoming students on USU’s residential campuses in Logan, Price and Blanding attend a live two-hour training session in person or on Zoom. New students at USU’s Statewide Campuses or USU Online complete a self-guided online training. Continuing students at all locations also complete an online course.

USU began requiring sexual misconduct prevention training for incoming students in fall 2017 and added continuing student training in 2021. New university employees have been trained by the Office of Equity since 2018, with annual trainings beginning in 2021.

“USU’s approach to preventing and responding to sexual misconduct includes support services for survivors, campus-wide awareness events, and mandatory training for almost all students and employees,” said Jodie Goodman, an Office of Equity prevention specialist who facilitates student trainings. Goodman works with a team of eight peer educators who conduct trainings at the Logan campus. The Office of Equity has four additional prevention specialists based at the Logan, USU Eastern and USU Blanding campuses.

“Our incoming student trainings focus on healthy relationships and communication, the university’s sexual misconduct policies, and ‘upstanding’ strategies for responding to disrespectful or potentially dangerous behaviors in our community,” Goodman said. Upstanding is a bystander intervention approach for the prevention of a variety of problematic situations, and USU has been training students in those techniques since 2017.

Students who complete the live trainings are given surveys before and after to assess how much they learn from the session.

“There has been a large increase in student knowledge about confidential support and resources for people who have experienced sexual misconduct, along with where to direct people to report those experiences,” Goodman said. Knowledge of the potential consequences for engaging in sexual misconduct also grew significantly in 2021 and 2022, she said.

The Office of Equity uses the results of the survey to make improvements for future trainings. In five of the seven questions analyzed in this year’s survey, the increase in knowledge was higher than in 2021.

“We want to keep that trend going,” Goodman said. “From suggestions that encourage student participation in group discussions to requests for additional videos that keep students engaged, feedback in post-surveys has helped us continuously improve the training.”

The survey includes several open-ended questions, such as: “What is one question you still have after attending the training?” and, “What was the best or most helpful part of the training?”

Goodman said she receives helpful and positive feedback in responses.

“I liked that it was facilitated by other university students,” wrote one student about the peer educators who conducted the training. “It made it feel like I was getting advice from my peers, not being talked down to. They did a really good job of explaining things and facilitating discussion.”

“I didn’t know that the university had so many resources to help victims and to help prevention,” responded another student.

“We trained USU’s largest ever incoming class this semester and saw some of the most impressive evaluation results yet,” Goodman said. “I am thankful for our rock-star group of peer educators and the support of the Office of Equity prevention team who helped make it happen.”

For more information about student sexual misconduct prevention training at USU, visit usu.edu/equity/trainings/student-prevention.