Care Team

The UAA Care Team's promotes safety and student support to educate the campus community on identification and referral of student behavior that is distressful, disruptive, or concerning through the use of a multidisciplinary group that serves as a centralized coordination system. In addition, the team coordinates the application of assessment, advocacy, and intervention services for referred students.

About the Care Team

The mission of the UAA Care Team is to promote a safe, caring and productive learning, living, and working environment for students at UAA. This is accomplished by addressing the needs of students through service coordination, assessment, and the implementation of individualized support plans.

Brief History

The University of Alaska Anchorage (UAA) takes seriously its responsibility to develop, monitor and maintain a campus environment that is safe and supportive for students, faculty, staff, and visitors.  To this end, UAA formed a Behavioral Intervention Team in 2009, now referred to as the Care Team. The Care Team focuses on evaluating and responding to concerning student behavior. Our focus is on prevention and intervention to offer students, staff, and faculty support.

While large scale campus violence is a factor in considering the importance of college campuses being able to address concerning student behavior, UAA’s CARE Team serves as a proactive team that follows patterns of behavior and responds through caring and coordinated intervention and advocacy prior to a crisis. UAA’s Care Team follows the best practices of the National Behavior Intervention Team Association (NaBITA) and its parent organization, the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management (NCHERM.) These organizations have helped the Care Team broaden its view of how to impact students and community by moving from the identification and reporting of concerning behaviors to a model that identifies student strengths and promotes self-advocacy and empowerment. This helps to equip the student for progress through their academic career while caring for the whole student and their health of the campus community (Adams, Hazelwood, Hayden, 2014). Since the UAA Care Team’s inception, it has grown from a loosely affiliated group of professionals to what it is today: a robust BIT with a full-time Care Team Coordinator and Case Manager, with formalized processes aimed toward distressed students whose behavior impacts not only the campus learning community but also their personal success. Student advocacy and empowerment play a central role in a Care Team’s function.