Virginia Tech names ISU deputy chief/psychologist as new threat assessment director

BLACKSBURG, Va. (AP) - Virginia Tech has named a new deputy police chief who also will have the new role of threat assessment director.

The university announced Wednesday it has hired Gene Deisinger, a licensed psychologist who has been Iowa State University's associate director of public safety and deputy police chief.

Deisinger will oversee and coordinate Virginia Tech's violence prevention program and its threat assessment team, which monitors troubled students.

Those programs were instituted after the mass shootings in 2007 when student gunman Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people on campus, then committed suicide.

Virginia Tech says in a news release that Deisinger is co-author of a recently released handbook on campus threat assessment teams.

He assumes his new duties Aug. 17.

Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.