The WKU Counseling and Testing Center will host its third annual spring conference this Friday from 8:30 a.m. until 2 p.m. in DUC room 301B.

The theme of the conference is “Looking for Trouble: Identifying Potential Threat in College Students.”

The conference will be of special interest to mental health providers, psychologists, student affair professionals, educators and related fields, according to the Counseling and Testing Center’s website. However, the conference is open to anyone, said Karl Laves, assistant director of the Counseling and Testing Center.

“Most of the people who have registered are from WKU,” Laves said. “This includes advisers, as well as individuals who are a part of student life, Greek life, residence life and more.”

The conference is a day-long series of workshops designed to allow mental health and education professionals to explore how to provide the safest environment for their customers, and/or students and their personnel, according to the Counseling and Testing Center’s website.    

“We will have two speakers this year,” Laves said. “Dr. Richard James, who will present an evaluation program that may be used at the public school and university levels, and Dr. Brian Van Brunt, who will lead a discussion on ‘silos.’  The third and final session will focus on how clinicians work with higher-risk clients.”

The cost of attendance for the event is $35 for students and $75 for faculty and professionals, according to the conference registration form. The deadline to register for the conference has been extended from Feb. 10 to Feb. 22, according to Julia Johnson, an office associate at the Counseling and Testing Center who is in charge of registration for the event.

“We haven’t really set a number on how many people we would like to have in attendance,” Johnson said. “In past years, our attendance for the conference has been around 30 or 40. This year, we have doubled that number, so we are very excited.”