From left to right: Sheena Monds, Tracye Pool, and Spring Kurtz.
Women’s Studies recently received a grant to implement an Activist-Enhanced Classroom offering sexual assault hotline training for students enrolled in the three sections of Introduction to Women’s Studies.
The grant was proposed in a collaborative effort by all three Introduction to Women’s Studies professors: Spring Kurtz, Sheena Monds, and Tracye Pool. The project seeks to help students to gain a better understanding of sexual assault as well as the impact it has on individuals.
The grant will support an eight-hour work-shop in March 2017, in which Regina McDevitt of the Partnership for Families, Children, and Adults will train 30 students as sexual assault hotline volunteers. The training consists of various steps, including a posttest and evaluation conducted by McDevitt, as well as additional online training to achieve approval as Partnership Hot Line Volunteers.
The workshop will be tied back to the classroom through an assignment which will relate some of the semester’s readings to the students’ new experience with the Partnership Hot Line Training.
McDevitt is currently on the board of the Tennessee Coalition against Domestic and Sexual Violence and is the chief operating officer of the Partnership for Families, Children, and Adults, Inc.— an organization she has worked for since 1996. McDevitt has over 25 years of experience training students in grades K-12, as well as social service professionals, mental health professionals, university employees, and more. She is also a consultant with the Office for Victims of Crime Training and Technical Assistance Center, a peer reviewer for the National Council on Accreditation, and has worked internationally with Slovakia as a consultant for domestic violence shelters.
