Empowering Academic Researchers to Strengthen Safety Culture Workshop

• Sponsored by ACS Division of Chemical Health & Safety
• 11:00am-2:30pm, Online via Zoom, $25 (no refunds), Registration required

This 3.5-hour workshop is primarily directed at frontline researchers in academic institutions: graduate students, postdoctoral scholars, and undergraduate students.

This workshop discusses the challenges of students making the transition to being independent researchers in academia. Topics discussed include: risk assessment of research projects, understanding the often confusing safety hierarchies of academic institutions, and graduate student led Laboratory Safety Teams.

Workshop goals are to:

• Educate participants about the value of risk assessment
• Guide participants towards gaining awareness of safety culture messages from the leadership at their institutions
• Empower participants to expand their safety networks and develop laboratory safety teams.

Faculty and safety staff are encouraged to attend in order to expand their understanding of these challenges and seek ways to become better Champions for these researchers.

This workshop is designed to be highly interactive, both to encourage networking among our participants and to support participants in developing functional plans to take back to their institutions. We utilize the Zoom platform to support both large group and small group activities. Those who have reported the workshop as useful are also those who heavily engaged. The participants add value to this workshop as much, if not more than, the organizers!

While we certainly understand that the unevenness of Internet connectivity and the challenges of work-from-home can serve as barriers, we strongly advise you to come to this workshop prepared to engage with mics and cameras on! If this is not possible, we ask that you engage via the chat function.

While this workshop has been designed from a US perspective, we have had participants from multiple countries report that they found it useful as well! This international audience is just one more reason why the interactivity among participants is so vital to the success of the workshop for all participants!

This workshop is brought to you by the ACS Division of Chemical Health and Safety as one of two workshops in the ACS CHAS Peer Led Workshop Series. To learn more about the Division and the ACS CHAS Peer Led Workshop Series, please visit our main website at dchas.org.