Starting in July, all UW-Madison employees will be required to take an online sexual violence prevention education course as part of the university’s efforts to crack down on sexual assault and harassment on campus.
“Promoting Equity at UW–Madison by Preventing Sexual Harassment and Sexual Violence” is a one hour primary prevention training module aimed to teach UW-Madison faculty definitions of sexual harassment, assault and stalking, as well as assault prevention strategies and information about reporting incidents.
The introduction of the new program comes just over a year after an Association of American Universities survey found high rates of female professional and graduate students reporting sexual harassment from professors at UW-Madison. Results from the survey showed that while just 4.1 percent of female undergraduates reported sexual harassment by university faculty, 32.9 percent of female graduate or professional students reported harassment by UW-Madison faculty, staff or administration.
The online training program—which will be hosted on D2L in Learn@UW—was designed, developed and implemented in response to federal, state and UW System expectations, but was also influenced by the recommendations made by the Sexual Assault Climate Survey Task Force, according to UW-Madison genetics professor and task force member Bret Payseur.
Payseur said that after the task force survey found “a remarkable rate of sexual harassment of graduate and professional students by faculty members,” the force came up with recommendations about how to deal with this issue. One solution was to increase awareness and training for employees on campus.
“Faculty are charged with educating students, but they are also charged with keeping them safe and supporting their well-being” Payseur said. “I think it is fundamental that we are aware, as faculty, of the scope and nature of this problem and that we are part of the solution. This means knowing how to effectively respond when a student approaches a professor and reports an experience they’ve had. It also means faculty learning about their own behavior.”
Payseur acknowledged that sexual violence and harassment has become a growing problem at UW-Madison but said that this prevention program is a part of the solution.
“The way we start to change [the growth of sexual violence] is to make faculty aware of what is acceptable behavior and to hold each other accountable,” Payseur said. “This program, which is really about education and raising awareness, is a very positive step in that direction.”
UW-Madison employees will be required to take a refresher course every three years. The university plans to have the program available in different languages by 2018.
