The Office of Environmental Health and Safety is planning to transition from its online safety training interface to a new system with expanded features, said Stephen Morin, director of the Office of Environmental Health and Safety. Morin said he hopes the switch will allow his office to maintain the current 99 percent safety training compliance rate.
Safety requirements are set by federal and University guidelines to ensure faculty, staff and students receive proper training before working in potentially hazardous environments.
The new interface, a web-based training program called Cornerstone Management Systems, will replace TrainCaster — the system used by the office for over 10 years — in 2012. The new system will be similar to TrainCaster, which allows administrators to add users and develop a safety curriculum appropriate to their work, with automatic notifications when users must renew their training, Morin said. It will also allow users to log in with their Brown username and password, a feature not available on TrainCaster.
There has been an increase in compliance with safety requirements since the University implemented TrainCaster, Morin said. The two most frequently required courses, "Laboratory Safety Training" and "Hazardous Waste Training," have consistently remained near 100 percent compliance, Morin said.
Laboratory safety training is required for anyone who works in a University laboratory, and hazardous waste training is required annually for anyone who uses or stores chemicals or produces hazardous waste, including employees of Facilities Management and students who work in theaters on campus.
Among the approximately 1,800 active researchers required to take the lab safety course, almost 99 percent completed the initial training and are up to date on refresher courses, which must be renewed every five years, Morin said. Out of 1,950 faculty, students and staff members required to take hazardous waste training annually, 98 percent have completed the initial training, and about 80 percent are current on their renewal training.
The drop to 80 percent compliance with refresher courses could represent students that recently left their position in a University lab but are still in the TrainCaster system, Morin said. "We'd rather have someone getting notices longer than they need to than us miss them," he said.
Students who continue to neglect their requirements receive notifications from the TrainCaster system until their courses are fulfilled. If a student ignores the reminders, the office may prevent that person from working in a lab until his or her requirements are complete, Morin said.
"We may not lock them out of the lab after a couple of weeks or a month," Morin said. "But if we find someone that's significantly overdue or someone that's ignoring things that are really important, then we utilize whatever resources we need to make sure that they're safe and that their co-workers are safe."
Proper safety training — laboratory safety and hazardous waste — is required before any student researcher in chemistry is granted access to MacMillan Hall, where the chemistry labs are located, wrote Matthew Zimmt, professor of chemistry and chair of the chemistry department, in an email to The Herald.
Undergraduates who have gone through safety training courses had mixed reviews about their effectiveness. The laboratory safety course should be shorter, said Catherine Freije '13, who is under the tutelage of Associate Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Sharon Swartz, and Rohan Ramesh '12, who works in Professor of Psychology Rebecca Burwell's lab. But both agreed the classes were necessary.
The laboratory safety training course is three hours long. The initial hazardous waste training is an hour-long session. For two years, the refresher course for hazardous waste also takes place in the classroom. After two years, a trainee may opt to take all future refresher courses online.
The office currently offers 35 laboratory safety training courses, with topics including basic lab safety training, asbestos awareness and working in extreme temperature environments, according to the website. The laboratory safety course is offered about 40 times annually, and the hazardous waste is offered about 60 times a year, Morin said. The refresher course is also available online at all times.
