Brian Van Brunt
Brian Van Brunt joined The NCHERM Group as senior vice president for professional
program development in January of 2013, and currently spends most of his time providing
consulting services to schools, colleges, and universities across the country and
abroad on a wide variety of topics related to student mental health, counseling, campus
violence, and behavioral intervention.
PRESENTER
Dr. Van Brunt is a regular speaker for academic conferences around the world. He
has presented dozens of workshops with the American College Counseling Association
(ACCA), Association of Student Conduct Administrators (ASCA), National Association
of Forensic Counselors (NAFC), American College Personal Association (ACPA), Association
of University College Counseling Center Directors (AUCCCD), Student Affairs Administrators
in Higher Education (NASPA), and the European Congress on Violence in Clinical Psychiatry
(OUD). View Presentations & Trainings List.
TRAINER
He has reached well over 150,000 individual staff and faculty at colleges and universes
across the country through on-site trainings, and remote, asynchronous training modules
on violence, mental health, and suicide prevention. He also created a card game for
resident advisors called RACE!. Dr. Van Brunt recently developed the Structured Interview
for Violence Risk Assessment (SIVRA-35), a starting place for conducting more standardized
research-based violence risk assessments with individuals determined to be at an increased
risk. His Violence Risk Assessment of the Written Word (VRAW2) is an instrument used
to assess emails, letters, writing assignments, or other text that contain threats
of violence or concerning themes. He is also the creator of CheckMate, a rampage violence
prevention program offered through NaBITA. Additionally, he created a series of training
tools to help campus personnel in the management of a wide range of student mental
health and behavioral issues. View Videos List.
TEACHER
Dr. Van Brunt has taught at a number of universities and colleges over his career.
He has offered classes in counseling theory, ethics, program evaluation, statistics,
and sociology for both graduate and undergraduate students. He has served as the director
of counseling at New England College and Western Kentucky University.
AUTHOR
In addition to authoring several books, he serves as the managing editor of Student
Affairs eNews (SAeN) and has published numerous articles in academic, peer-reviewed
journals and practice-based publications. Dr. Van Brunt also developed a mental health
crisis guide for study abroad advisors for the American Councils and written textbook
test banks and instructor guides for Pearson Education. View Publications List.
THOUGHT LEADER
Dr. Van Brunt is past-president of the American College Counseling Association (ACCA),
the president-elect and executive director of the National Behavioral Intervention
Team Association (NaBITA), and former president of the School and College Organization
for Prevention Educators (SCOPE). He has been interviewed by the New York Times, National
Pubic Radio, LA Times, and USA Today, and has appeared on Headline News and Anderson
Cooper 360.
He has a doctoral degree in counseling supervision and education from the University
of Sarasota/Argosy and a master’s degree in counseling and psychological services
from Salem State University.
Early in his career, Dr. Van Brunt provided case management services through the
Massachusetts Department of Mental Health, coordinated involuntary psychiatric commitments
for law enforcement and hospital emergency departments, offered medical care as an
Emergency Medical Technician (EMT-R) and Ski Patrol member, and was a registered white
water rafting guide in the state of Maine. He is certified in PADI SCUBA, QPR suicide
prevention, and BASICS alcohol education.
When he’s not traveling for work, he spends his time with his family, wandering the
world, taking photographs, and blogging.