Before the semester begins, colleges and universities often focus on visible logistics such as move-in, orientation, course schedules, and staffing. Just as important, however, is ensuring that the right people are trained before students and faculty return. Institutions are better positioned when the employees most likely to receive complaints and reports understand their roles, reporting obligations, and institutional policies before the fall term is underway.

The first group to assess is employees with formal compliance or response responsibilities, including Title IX personnel, Title VI personnel, and other civil rights compliance staff, student conduct professionals, disability services staff, HR personnel, campus police and safety officials, investigators, hearing officers, and others involved in grievance handling or institutional response. These employees must be trained not only as a matter of best compliance practices, but often pursuant to the training requirements in federal or state law.

These employees often need more than general reminders or self-study slide decks. They need practical training tied to current legal requirements, institutional policies, and day-to-day responsibilities. Depending on the role, that may include a full overview of Title IX or Title VI, legal updates from the past academic year, refresher training on institutional policies and procedures, focused training on intake, investigations, implicit bias, and effective hearings, Section 504 and ADA accommodations best practices, and Title IX requirements relating to pregnant students. Training materials should be reviewed to ensure they conform to the requirements of applicable law, and to ensure that the materials do not, in themselves, present a risk to the institution.

A second group is broader but equally important: employees who are not specialists but are likely to receive concerns first. Faculty members, residence life staff, academic advisors, athletics personnel, supervisors, and student affairs professionals are often the first to hear about harassment, accommodation requests, student distress, bias concerns, or other issues requiring institutional follow-up. These employees do not need to be experts, but they do need clear, practical guidance on what to recognize, what to document, how to support, and which campus offices handle which concerns.

Institutions may also want to consider training on recurring issues receiving increased attention, including Clery Act compliance, hazing prevention, minors on campus, protests and demonstrations on campus, crisis communications, student mental health crises, and interactions with federal law enforcement on immigration issues. Cross-training between and among departments that engage in issues that cross over and throughout the institution is also a very good practice, for instance, between HR and administration/finance matters, OGC and compliance, or civil rights, student conduct, and employee conduct.

The key question is not simply who must attend training, but who is positioned to affect legal risk once the semester starts.