Creating a culture that values safety
- PDF / 856,302 Bytes
- 2 Pages / 585 x 783 pts Page_size
- 98 Downloads / 198 Views
MATERIAL MATTERS
Creating a culture that values safety By Humaira Taz
L
ab safety tends to be an extremely underrated concept to many students, either because they do not understand the gravity of the consequences of not following all necessary precautions, or they think being careful might prevent issues, even if they don’t know the hazards related to chemicals they are handling. If you don’t spill the chemical then you don’t have to worry about anything, right? Lab safety is an issue that academia constantly pushes to improve and that industries consider a top priority. In 2013, MRS Bulletin published an article1 by Gary Messing, then head of the Materials Science and Engineering (MatSE) Department and founder of the MatSE Department Safety Committee at The Pennsylvania State University (PSU), which discussed initiatives taken by the university since 2008 in collaboration with industry to improve their lab safety culture. Ten years later, where are they now? “We have a completely different safety culture now. It’s not perfect, but it is night-and-day different from our past system before 2008, and it’s likely much different than most academic labs. The students are more attentive to safety, and there are no surprises or hurt feelings when safety issues are raised. The faculty is on board. The administration is on board and pushes safety independently of the research
groups,” commented Michael Hickner, a professor in the MatSE Department and a Corning Faculty Fellow at PSU. John Mauro is currently the faculty head of their safety committee, while Scott Henninger, facilities representative, and Elizabeth Kupp, associate research professor in the MatSE Department, are the staff heads. A discussion with Kupp revealed a lot about how the university has brought about this change. Before 2008, it was difficult to get students to even wear safety glasses. Now that baseline has moved up. In the MatSE Department at PSU, all undergrads must take a materials science safety training course. In addition, 10% of their grades in lab courses are assigned around safety training, thus integrating them into the safety culture from an early stage. Graduate students who are the safety managers of their labs have the option to take a onecredit-hour course; this also gives them a competitive edge in industry as leaders in safety. According to Kupp, students are held to a high safety standard in the materials science community at PSU—to the point that their card access to buildings might be revoked if their behavior shows negligence in terms of the safety of people around them. “Peer counseling is highly encouraged. If you see something, then say something. There is an anonymous online
platform too for students to report instances related to safety,” said Kupp. Because there is a wide spectrum of students—starting from new graduate and undergraduate students to those who have had exposure to safety standards in industry—the aim is to constantly establish that everyone should contribute to their colleagues’ safety. Hickner said that
Data Loading...
