Pick up Summit materials, meet fellow participants, and review the day’s agenda.

Hear about the prevention frameworks and abolitionist principles that guide the MCVP from Dr. Chris Linder, who has served as the Director of the MCVP until May 2025. This session will dig into the foundation of the Center and what how that foundation has been essential to the unique focus on primary prevention. Dr. Linder is the perfect voice to highlight as the founder of the Center, a current researcher, and faculty member. Read her full bio on the overview tab and check out her faculty profile here.

Take a break from the planned agenda and eat the catered lunch. Resist the urge to look at emails by chatting with the other participants at your table. This is also a good time to move your body as needed.

Most educational programs on sexual violence focus on prevention from the perspective on how not to be harmed versus how not to cause harm. Most sexual violence is committed by someone known to the victim, and often, the people committing harm don't often don’t realize their behavior is harmful. To address this, we engage in interactive activities and discussions that leave participants with an understanding of normalized harmful behaviors and how they can avoid causing harm. Takeaways from this session include not all behaviors have to be illegal to be harmful; harm is experienced differently by different people; we are all capable of causing harm.

Hear from the Center’s Graduate Assistant as she explores education interventions across campus, this will feature MCVP campaign You Might Be Causing Harm If…Poster Campaign and Instagram Education series.

End the day with a reflection session. This session will be time for participants to ask questions, collaborate with peers, and explore ideas of how they might apply the work to their local communities. Taking intentional time to reflect has been crucial to our own learning at the Center and we are committed to make space for participants to reflect as well.

Begin the day with time to connect with fellow participants and hear what is standing out to each other. Discuss with other participants emerging ideas for their work and campus culture. Space to formally ask questions and seek clarity to any wonderings from the day before. Coffee, teas, and light breakfast snacks will be available.

Hear about how student staff engage in primary prevention through learning and action projects. Student staff will directly engage with participants to answer questions and share how they applied learning to their projects.

Hear about ongoing research related to relationship and sexual violence prevention and healing. Dr. Karunaratne will review key findings from her research and facilitate time for participants to consider how this impacts their hyper-local communities and work. Dr. Karunaratne is a marvelous voice to highlight in this space. In her research she uplifts stories are often overlooked and employs power-conscious and transformative frameworks to understand issues of sexual violence. Read her full bio on the overview tab and look at her personal website here.

Take a break from the planned agenda and eat the catered lunch. Resist the urge to look at emails by chatting with the other participants at your table. This is also a good time to move your body as needed.

This session will focus on one of the main principles of abolition that informs our work: accountability over punishment. Participants will engage in activities that we have used to practice focusing on accountability including pieces from our workshop on Reading and Respecting Boundaries and Accepting Rejection. This session will also explore new ways of framing accountability work.

The final session of the 2025 Catalyst Summit will be facilitated by Dr. Linder and Dr. Karunaratne. It will be a space where everyone can come together to share their ideas, qualms, and hopes. This is where creativity, collective work, and experimentation will blossom new emerging practices for you! Participants will explore the question of “how can I take what I have learned and turn it into practice?”.