Friday, December 11, 2026
11:00 am – 12:15 pm ET

Strengthen Your Campus Response and Preparedness

Student death can profoundly affect an entire campus community. Students, faculty, staff, administrators, and the broader campus community may all experience grief, uncertainty, and disruption. For the professionals responsible for supporting them, the aftermath can bring immense emotional and operational demands. Yet when a student death occurs, there is no time to build a response plan from scratch.

Join us on December 11, 2026, as our seasoned presenter will provide practical, research-informed strategies for building a comprehensive postvention plan, strengthening cross-campus coordination, navigating communication challenges and supporting the well-being of responders.

Move from reactive crisis management to proactive, compassionate preparedness. You will leave this training with practical tools, actionable strategies, and a stronger understanding of how to prepare for and respond to student loss—before, during and after a crisis. You cannot predict when student loss will affect your campus but you can prepare your institution to respond with compassion, coordination and confidence.

Topics Covered

Leave the webinar prepared with strategies to confidently:

• Identify key elements of a proactive postvention framework and recognize gaps in existing response systems, policies, and procedures.
• Develop a structured approach to postvention planning, including roles, responsibilities, communication protocols, and ongoing plan maintenance.
• Strengthen cross-campus coordination by identifying strategies for engaging student affairs, counseling, campus safety, communications, academic units, leadership, and other stakeholders in a coordinated response.
• Apply compassionate, research-informed support strategies and approaches for addressing the needs of students, faculty, staff, administrators, and first responders following a student death.
• Prepare for complex communication challenges and the considerations necessary for communicating about student deaths across different circumstances, including social media, stakeholder expectations, and the need for timely, sensitive messaging.
• Recognize and address responder well-being to reduce burnout, mitigate secondary trauma, and promote sustainable support for professionals involved in postvention efforts.
  

Presenter

Dr. Smita Ruzicka currently serves as the Vice President for Student Affairs at Middlebury College where she provides leadership for a wide portfolio of services and programs aimed at enhancing the overall student experience.
Click here for full bio.

Invite your entire team for one low price!

• Live 75-minute online session with carefully selected expert(s)
  
• Unlimited access for your entire team to view webinar recording for two years (available after live event)
• Materials for your team (handouts, discussion questions, etc.)
• Certificate of completion for each participant
  

Instructions for live webinar access for your group are provided to you immediately upon checkout. Instructions for accessing the on-demand recording will be emailed to you approximately 24 hours following the live webinar. Feel free to contact us at info@paper-clip.com or 1-866-295-0505 with any questions. For information about licensing this webinar for unlimited distribution on your institution’s internal network/server, email info@paper-clip.com.

PaperClip Communications welcomes persons with disabilities to join our webinars. If you anticipate needing an accommodation or have questions about the online access provided, please email info@paper-clip.com at least two weeks in advance of your participation.