(239e) How We Designed Our Safety Program to Improve Safety Education and Process, and to Satisfy Aiche Program Criteria

Process safety is a critical element of a Chemical Engineer’s education and has become a valued engineering skill in the hiring process. Beginning two years ago, we began a self-examination of our safety program and processes. We looked specifically at how safety procedures were being applied in research (e.g. graduate and undergraduate) and how safety concepts were being taught within the undergraduate program curriculum. We learned that our safety program was in need of a refresh, for example, our departmental safety culture had become heterogenous and our undergraduate safety program lacked context and cohesion. Over the past two years, we have addressed these issues by implementing a number of changes to our safety program both inside and outside of the classroom. Within the classroom we have designed, implemented, and assessed several new educational interventions. For example, we created a new dedicated process safety design module (1-credit) that is coupled with the 4^th year Capstone experience. We also integrated novel hazard assessment and process safety pedagogy into our Unit Operations Labs (e.g. safety moments, incident reporting). In addition to these core elements, we also created a new undergraduate process safety elective course (3-credits), and initiated an undergraduate process safety research program. Outside of the classroom, opportunities for improvement in safety processes were initially informed by a safety culture survey that we used to benchmark safety practices and behaviors across the department. Results from this study led to a refresh of our safety procedures and protocols, e.g., revised safety manual and the development of an incident reporting mechanism. Integrating change both inside and outside the classroom has led to an improvement in the quality of safety being practiced and discussed in research labs and classrooms alike.

In this presentation, we will share our journey from two years of effort spent updating our safety processes. We will present data and discuss insights gathered from student feedback about perceptions of safety, safety incident reporting in the department, and from safety moments presented by both graduate and undergraduate students. We will also discuss our strategy for continuous improvement (e.g. strengthen safety culture) and share why we believe our integration of safety processes inside and outside of the classroom is a great approach for satisfying the AIChE Program Criteria.