(382a) Affecting Change: Creating a Culture of Safety within a Chemical Engineering Education Program

The goal of every safety program is to prevent accidents. However, a safety program designed for use in Chemical Engineering education should have much broader goals. It should help our students develop safety awareness and hazards recognition skills; teach safe design and operation of chemical processing activities; empower our students to establish a culture of safety within their working environment; and, improve their safety awareness in their private lives and in the communities in which they live.

The Chemical Engineering department at Michigan Technological University has 30 years of experience integrating safety education into the undergraduate curriculum. Initially, our safety program was restricted to the senior-level Unit Operations Laboratory and was an autocratic, “follow-the-rules”, management-driven safety program. In the late-1980’s the safety program was remodeled to reflect several successful industrial safety programs of the time and named Prevent Accidents With Safety (PAWS). In 1990, a required, senior-level course in Chemical Process Safety was added to the Chemical Engineering curriculum. In 2000, under the new ABET program evaluation criteria, the laboratory safety program was included as one of the curriculum’s primary assessment tools. By the mid-2000’s the PAWS safety program was implemented into the junior-level Fundamentals of Chemical Engineering Laboratory course. And in 2011, at the request of students in Unit Operations Laboratory, our regularly-scheduled safety meetings include a “safety outside the workplace” topic.

The required safety course and comprehensive PAWS laboratory safety program continue to evolve and improve. This presentation will cover important aspects of the evolution and the current scope of the Chemical Engineering safety program at Michigan Technological University.