The University of Utah will host the 4th annual Utah Campus Safety Summit on March 19, 2026.

This year’s theme, Preventing & Preparing for Active Threats on Campus, focuses on proactive measures to reduce risk and enhance emergency readiness across Utah’s educational institutions. The summit will emphasize collaborative prevention and preparedness and address both psychological and operational aspects of safety, from threat assessment and reporting to case studies and coordinated responses during critical incidents.

The Utah Campus Safety Summit was initiated in 2023 by University of Utah Chief Safety Officer, Keith Squires, to bring Utah’s higher education and K-12 public safety practitioners together with their administrators, faculty and staff to better collaborate in their mission to protect students and share best practices.

“People often ask what keeps me up at night,” said Squires. “Unfortunately, the answer is something we see in the news all too often. Another school shooting or active aggressor event at a large gathering place. This year’s summit is solely focused on preventing and preparing for these.”

The Utah Campus Safety Summit’s one-day, in-person format brings together safety professionals across the state, law enforcement, university administrators and campus community members to engage in a day of discussion, learning and strategy on modern campus safety challenges.

“This year’s presentations, including firsthand testimony from a survivor of a campus mass shooting, case studies of other campus attacks and an exploration of how our bodies are likely to respond during such incidents are designed to offer tangible, practical actions that any of us can use to help keep ourselves and our colleagues safe,” said Kim Barnett, deputy chief safety officer for support services and organizer of the safety summit.

The day’s sessions will also explore how communities can report and interpret warning signs, support victims and survivors of violence and develop multidisciplinary protocols that marry law enforcement tactics with campus-specific strategies.

A key goal of the summit is to move beyond traditional “see something, say something” messaging to a holistic model of community awareness and support that results in a more nuanced approach to threat detection and prevention.

Keith Livingston, associate director of threat assessment and management in the U’s Department of Public Safety, will speak about seeing and reporting concerning actions. “If we were to dissect any major act of targeted violence committed by an individual, we almost always find behavioral warning signs. Erratic behavior, concerning social media posts or expressed grievances are among the indicators commonly present in these attacks, yet they often go unreported. Hindsight is always 20/20, and it’s understandable why behaviors that seem isolated or insignificant at the time may not raise concern. However, I see firsthand the power of reporting and how simple actions can empower individuals to become guardians of our campus communities.”

The summit’s timing is happening against a backdrop of heightened awareness of campus safety, law enforcement resources and community involvement—issues that are top-of-mind for students and families in Utah and nationwide.

Universities and colleges have increasingly focused on coordinated response frameworks, behavioral threat teams and compliance with federal safety statutes such as the Clery Act. These ongoing efforts are echoed both within the U’s safety policies and across the Utah System of Higher Education (USHE) with the recent creation of the USHE Campus Safety Task Force that is evaluating campus safety across Utah’s public colleges and universities and recommending systemwide policies and practices to enhance the safety and well-being of students, faculty and staff.

“To prepare, prevent and respond to these types of events is the responsibility of everyone on our campuses,” said Squires, who also serves as the co-chair of the USHE Campus Safety Task Force. “I have the opportunity to interact with higher education leaders and policymakers from across our state. While we may wear different colors to show our respective school spirit or engage in friendly banter over which one of our sports teams is the best, we all operate from a common reality—without a safe campus, we can’t achieve our educational, research and health care initiatives that drive our success. We all must take time to prepare for the event we hope never happens, but have our plan of action if it does.”

The Utah Campus Safety Summit aims to serve as a statewide forum for public safety dialogue and strengthen safety networks across campuses. Last year’s event attracted representatives from nearly all higher education institutions and technical colleges in Utah, along with federal, state and local law enforcement partners who discussed school violence research, cybercrime protection strategies, hate crime response and law enforcement/administrator coordination.

“Knowing that campus violence could happen to me or someone I love is a difficult reality—one that motivates us to learn more about preventing and preparing for an active threat,” said Barnett. “If you’re looking for a first step toward preparedness, the Utah Campus Safety Summit is it.”

Early bird registration for the 2026 event is now open through Feb. 13.