The Community Outreach and Support Team (COAST) at the University of Illinois Police Department provides educational programming, organizes community events and offers visits from its team of therapy dogs.

Students, faculty and staff can request presentations on a number of topics including active threats, self-defense, situational awareness and many others.

Officers are available to visit your student group, organization, office or may fit into your existing programming to provide campus safety and crime prevention talks and presentations. The University of Illinois Police Department has experts in a number of areas, including alcohol safety and awareness, emergency preparedness, active threat response or general campus safety.

UIPD’s Community Police Academy provides a behind-the-scenes experience to learn about police operations, investigations, crime prevention, and specialized units. It is an opportunity for you to participate in hands-on learning, demonstrations, and presentations from current police officers.
The Community Police Academy is typically offered once per semester. It’s a free four-week course involving one three-hour class per week, and it takes place on the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign campus. It is free of charge and open to everyone.

COAST offers the Rape Aggression Defense (R.A.D.) class, which focuses on strategies to reduce a woman’s chance of being targeted for a crime, and on the physical skills they can use if they ever find themselves in a position where they need to defend themselves. It is a 12-hour course taught over four weeks, generally in the early evening on the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign campus.

It is open to all people who identify as a woman, but preference is given to University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign students, faculty and staff.