DECATUR - Told by her principal that her teacher had been killed in a car accident the night before, Sherri's reaction was immediate.

"WHAT?" she screamed before he finished. "What do you mean she's dead? Mrs. Miller can't be dead!"

Seconds later, Erik attempted to break the tension by asking, "Does this mean we don't have to take the test today?"

Jo Ann turned on Erik, then on Sherri, accusing them of upsetting the teacher the day before and making it impossible for her to concentrate. "You know this is your fault," she hissed.

Stuart turned his face away, and Lori also kept quiet, occasionally staring at her hands as the drama continued to unfold.

Dealing with emotions caused by tragedy is not an exact science.

Yet as colleges and universities upgrade security and warning systems after the Feb. 14 shootings at Northern Illinois University and last year at Virginia Tech, they are learning how to address psychological pain on a large scale.

More than 500 people responded after Northern officials e-mailed a nationwide plea for counselors to assist as classes resumed Feb. 25. Among them was Stacey Sparks of Millikin University.

So many employees of Richland Community College wanted to take post-crisis intervention training offered by the Mental Health Association of Macon County on Feb. 29, the association offered an additional training session at the college a month later.

"I thought this would be good for me," said Lori Benedict, an adjunct psychology instructor. "With the things that have happened on college campuses, it bothers me knowing my kids are going to college somewhere that's far away, and I have no real contact with them on a daily basis."

Indeed, Benedict played the unfamiliar part of "quiet new student" in the above role play during the training at Richland.

The other parts were played by Tim Haworth, assistant director of the Macon County Mental Health Board, as the principal; Sherri Arnold, executive director of the mental health association, as the angry student; and the following Richland employees as her classmates - Jo Ann Wirey, director of admissions and records; counselor Stuart Coon; and Erik Ashby, director of campus life.

"Even if I didn't know anybody else, being the person that I am, I would have felt something, and it would have been hard for me to keep quiet," Benedict said.

The mental health association hopes to add many of the new trainees to its roster of about 55 volunteers willing to go into Macon County elementary, middle and high schools when invited after a traumatic event. The purpose is not to provide therapy but to help students and staff process what has happened and identify people who might need additional help.

Richland could call on the Macon County Mental Health Board if it experienced a mass casualty, but increasing the number of employees with post-crisis intervention training could assist during the critical first moments before other help arrived.

Gianina Baker, a crisis volunteer for the mental health association since 2006 and one of four counselors at Richland, said the association's recent training doubled the college's trained staff to about two dozen people.

In addition, the college hired David Slade Jr., former Decatur deputy police chief for administrative operations, in January as its first director of campus safety to comply with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's National Incident Management System. "Richland takes a proactive response in dealing with emergencies and mental health," he said.

Slade said that has included inspecting all college buildings for threats and instituting daily inspections after a former student at Northern Illinois fatally shot five students and killed himself on Valentine's Day.

John Mickler, director of safety and security at Millikin, said the university has just signed a contract for a supplementary electronic communication system that will let staff, students and employees register nonuniversity computers, phones and e-mail accounts to receive emergency warnings.

During his nine years there, Millikin has relied on its own counselors and student development staff to help students cope after a student died in a fire at Kappa Sigma fraternity in 2000, a second was seriously injured in a fire at Tau Kappa Epsilon fraternity in 2003 and a third was struck by a car and seriously hurt in 2006.

But Mickler said he would not hesitate to call on the mental health board or other resources if the situation warranted.

Haworth said disaster mental health volunteers would be a "calming, helpful presence" at the reunification center set up to reunite survivors with their families, the same role they played at the one-stop shop offered after the 2006 ice storm to help storm victims get the help they needed.

"We call it 'stealth mental health,' " Haworth told three dozen social service representatives who attended the disaster preparedness training he led April 10 at the Macon County Health Department. "At the one-stop shop, we just came alongside people who getting emotional who were trying to fill out a form or deal with insurance. We provided them with comfort or just helped them fill out the stupid form.

"If we put on a badge that said 'mental health,' we would repel people everywhere we went."

Northern Illinois patterned its response after Virginia Tech's but took it to the next level - assigning a volunteer counselor to every class, not just ones where students were injured and killed, as well as sending them to academic departments, university offices and each satellite campus.

Micky Sharma, director of the counseling and student development center, said volunteers came from as far as Arizona and Connecticut.

"This outpouring of support helped in the healing of a tremendous heartache," he said. "I am grateful and extremely humbled to be part of a profession and community of such wonderful individuals."

Millikin's Sparks gave brief presentations on grief to eight classes and between 200 and 300 students at Northern, then made herself available to those who wished to speak with her privately. She spent Feb. 25 at with visual arts students and Feb. 26 with physics students.

She said the primary emotion she encountered was sadness. "The campus was very quiet and respectful," she said. "It was rare not to get a smile or a thank-you from every person you met."

Sparks also said she was deeply impressed by the way the university responded to the crisis.

"They talked about honoring your emotions, wherever you happened to be," she said. "It's a familiar concept, but I can't remember how I said it before."

Theresa Churchill can be reached at tchurchill@herald-review.com or 421-7978.