Mission & Philosophy

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UVA Lawn in the spring

The mission of UVA’s Violence Prevention Committee (VPC) and Threat Assessment Team (TAT) is to provide a safe environment for all members of the UVA community (see policy HRM-028). To advance its mission TAT uses evidence-based threat assessment best practices to asses, manage, intervene, and mitigate identified acts or threats of violence by or against faculty, staff, students, Medical Center employees, patients, and visitors.

  • The TAT believes early recognition, referral, and intervention are critical to mitigate a concerning situation and prevent violence. 

  • Members of TAT treat all people with dignity and respect and believe this is fundamental to the University’s violence prevention efforts. 

  • All members of the UVA community are an essential part of TAT’s mission and should share incidents, observations, or communications that create concern about potential violence. 

  • Threat assessment is a violence prevention effort, it is not a predictive process or a profile. 

  • Threat assessment and management is a dynamic investigative and operational process used to identify, evaluate, and respond to warning, threatening, or violent behavior.