(516e) Incorporation of Safety Instruction into the Chemical Engineering Undergraduate Curriculum at UMass Lowell

Safety is (or should be) “Job One” for all Chemical Engineers working across the diverse industries (e.g., refining, petrochemical, specialty chemicals, pharmaceutical, food processing, metals processing, electronics, etc.) where chemical engineers are actively employed. Yet, the incorporation of safety into the undergraduate curriculum to prepare our students for this critical function often remains limited to instruction in safety policies and procedures students need for their undergraduate chemistry, physics and unit operation laboratory courses. Safety from an industrial perspective often receives little attention.

Here at UMass Lowell, we have actively included safety instruction within the two-semester capstone design course for many years. Components of our program include:

• Requirement that all graduating seniors have completed the SAChE Level One (Basic) Curriculum modules.
• Classroom instruction on such industrial safety topics as Inherently Safe Design (ISD) principles, the roles of regulatory agencies (OSHA, EPA, DHS, DOE, DOT), Hazards and Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA), and Process Safety Hierarchy (including LOPA).
• Two-hour in-class HAZOP analysis exercise.
• Incorporation of specific sections and roles (Chief Safety Officer, Regulatory Controls Officer, Chief Operations Officer) covering the plant and personnel safety and regulatory issues for their capstone design project.

The evolution of these items into the undergraduate curriculum and future plans for enhancing what we do will be discussed.