Dr. Quinton J. Bruch, April 7th, 2022
Excerpts from “Resources for Improving Safety Culture, Training, and Awareness in the Academic Laboratory”
Full paper can be found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780081026885000921?via%3Dihub
Full paper can be found here: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780081026885000921?via%3Dihub
Theme 1: Setting Core Values and Leading By Example.
Mission statements. …Mission statements establish the priorities and values of an organization, and can be useful in setting a positive example and signaling to potential new researchers the importance of safety. To examine the current state of public-facing mission statements, we accessed the websites of the top [a][b]50 chemistry graduate programs in the United States and searched any published mission statements for mentions of safety. [c]Although 29 departments had prominently displayed mission statements on their websites, only two (the University of Pennsylvania and UMN) included practicing safe chemistry in their mission statement (~at time of publishing in early 2021).[d][e][f][g]
Regular and consistent discussions about safety. Leaders can demonstrate that safety is a priority by regularly discussing safety in the context of experimental set-up, research presentations, literature presentations, or other student interactions[h][i]. Many potential safety teaching moments occur during routine discussions of the day-to-day lab experience.[j] Additionally, “safety minutes[k][l]”[m][n] have become a popular method in both industry and academia to address safety at the beginning of meetings.
Holding researchers accountable[o][p]. In an academic setting, researchers are still in the trainee stage of the career. As a result, it is important to hold follow-up discussions on safety to ensure that they are being properly implemented.[q] For example, in the UMN Department of Chemistry a subset of the departmental safety committee performs regular PPE “spot checks,”[r][s] and highlights exemplary behavior through spotlights in departmental media. Additionally, each UMN chemistry graduate student participates in an annual review process that includes laboratory safety as a formal category.[t] Candid discussion and follow-up on safe practices is critical for effective trainee development.
Theme 2: Empowering Researchers to Collaborate and Practice Safe Science.
Within a group: designate safety officers. Empower group members to take charge of safety within a group, both as individuals and through formal appointed roles such as laboratory safety officers (LSOs).[u] LSOs can serve multiple important roles within a research group. First, LSOs can act as a safety role model for peers in the research group, and also as a resource for departmental policy. Further, they act as liaisons to ensure open communication between the PI, the research group, and EHS staff. These types of formal liaisons are critical for fostering collaborations between a PI, EHS, and the researchers actually carrying out labwork. LSOs can also assist [v][w]with routine safety upkeep in a lab, such as managing hazardous waste removal protocols and regularly testing safety equipment such as eyewash stations. For example, in the departments of chemistry at UMN and UNC, LSOs are responsible for periodically flushing eyewash stations and recording the check on nearby signage[x].[y][z][aa][ab] Finally, LSOs are also natural picks for department-level initiatives such as department safety committees or student-led joint safety teams.[ac]
Within a group: work on policies as a collective. Have researchers co-write, edit, and revise standard operating procedures (SOPs).[ad] Many EHS offices have guides and templates for writing SOPs. More details on SOPs will be discussed in the training section of this chapter. Co-writing has the double benefit of acting as a safety teaching moment while also helping researchers feel more engaged and responsible for the safety protocols of the group.[ae][af][ag]
Within a department: establish safety collaborations.[ah] Research groups within departments often have very diverse sets of expertise. These should be leveraged through collaboration to complement “blind spots”[ai] within a particular group to the benefit of all involved—commonly, this is done through departmental safety committees, but alternative (or complementary) models are emerging. An extremely successful and increasingly popular strategy for establishing department-wide safety collaborations is the Joint Safety Team model.
Joint Safety Teams (JSTs). A Joint Safety Team (JST) is a collaborative, graduate student- and postdoc-led initiative with the goal of proliferating a culture of laboratory safety by bridging the gaps between safety administration, departmental administration, and researchers. JSTs are built on the premise that grassroots efforts can empower students to take ownership of safety practices, thus improving safety culture from the ground up. Since its inception in 2012, the first JST at UMN (a joint endeavor between the departments of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering & Materials Science, spurred through collaboration with Dow Chemical) has directly and significantly impacted the adoption of improved safety practices, and also noticeably improved the overall safety culture. Indeed, the energy and enthusiasm of students, which are well-recognized as key drivers in research innovation, can also be a significant driver for improving safety culture.[aj][ak]
…The JST model has several advantages[al]: (1) it spreads the safety burden across a greater number of stakeholders, reducing the workload for any one individual or committee; (2) it provides departmental leadership with better insight into the “on-the-ground” attitudes and behaviors of researchers;[am][an][ao][ap] and (3) it provides students with practical safety leadership opportunities that will be beneficial to their career. In fact, many of the strategies discussed in this chapter can be either traced back to a JST, or could potentially be implemented by a JST.
An inherent challenge with student-led initiatives like JSTs is that the high student turnover in a graduate program necessitates ongoing enthusiastic participation of students after the first generation. In fact, after the first generation of LSOs left the UMN JST upon graduation, there was a temporary lag in enthusiasm and engagement. In order to maintain consistent engagement with the JST, the departmental administration created small salary bonuses for officer-level positions within the JST, as well as a funded TA position. Since spending time on JST activities takes away from potential research or other time, it seems reasonable that students be compensated accordingly when resources allow it…[aq][ar]
3. Training
Initial Safety Training. Chemical safety training often starts with standardized, institution-wide modules that accompany a comprehensive chemical hygiene plan or laboratory safety manual. These are important resources, but researchers can be overwhelmed by the amount of information[as][at]—particularly if only some components seem directly relevant. There is anecdotal evidence that augmentation with departmental-level training[au][av][aw] initiatives can provide a stronger safety training foundation. For example, several departments have implemented laboratory safety courses. At UNC, a course for all first-year chemistry graduate students was created with the goal of providing additional training tailored to the department’s students. Iteratively refined using student feedback, the course operates via a “flipped classroom” model to maximize engagement. The course combines case study-based instruction, role playing (i.e., “what would you do” scenarios), hands-on activities (e.g., field trips to academic labs), and discussions led by active researchers in chemistry subdisciplines or industrial research.
Continued Safety Training[ax]. Maintaining engagement and critical thinking about safety can help assure that individual researchers continue to use safe practices,[ay] and can strengthen the broader safety culture. Without reinforcement, complacency is to be expected—and this can lead to catastrophe. We believe continued training can go well beyond an annual review of documentation by incorporating aspects of safety training seamlessly into existing frameworks.
Departments can incorporate safety minutes into weekly seminars or meetings, creating dedicated time for safety discussions (e.g., specific hazards, risk assessment, or emergency action plans). In our experience, safety minutes are most effective when they combine interactive prompts[az] that encourage researcher participation and discussion. These safety minutes allow researchers to learn from one another and collaborate on safety.
While safety minutes provide continuous exposure and opportunities to practice thinking about safety, they lack critical hands-on (re)learning experiences. Some institutions have implemented annual researcher-driven activities to help address this challenge. For example, researchers at UNC started “safety field days” (harkening back to field days in grade school) designed specifically to offer practice with hands-on techniques in small groups. At UMN, principal investigators participate in an annual SOP “peer review” process, in which two PIs pair up and discuss strengths and potential weaknesses of a given research group’s SOP portfolio.[ba][bb]
Continued training can also come, perhaps paradoxically, when a researcher steps into a mentoring role to train someone else. The act of mentoring a less experienced researcher provides training to the mentee, but also forces the mentor to re-establish a commitment to safe practices and re-learn best practices[bc].[bd] Peer teaching approaches have long been known to improve learning outcomes for both the mentor and the mentee. With regards to safety training, mentors would be re-exposed to a number of resources used in initial safety trainings, such as SOPs, while having to demonstrate mastery over the material through their teaching. Furthermore, providing hands-on instruction would require demonstrating techniques for mentees and subsequently critically assessing and correcting the mentee’s technique. Additionally, mentors would have to engage in critical thinking about safety while answering questions and guiding the mentee’s risk assessments.
Continued training is important for all members of a research group. Seniority does not necessarily convey innate understandings of safety, nor does it exempt oneself from complacency. For example, incoming postdocs[be] will bring a wealth of research and safety knowledge, but they may not be as intimately familiar with all of the hazards or procedures of their new lab, or they may come from a group or department with a different safety culture. Discussing safety with researchers can be difficult, but is a necessary part of both initial and continued training.
4. Awareness[bf]
Awareness as it pertains to chemical safety involves building layers of experience and expertise on top of safety training. It is about being mindful and engaged in the lab and being proactive and prepared in the event of an adverse scenario. Awareness is about foreseeing and avoiding accidents before they happen, not just making retroactive changes to prevent them from happening again. There are aspects of awareness that come from experiential learning—knowing the sights and sounds of the lab—while other aspects grow out of more formal training. For example, awareness of the potential hazards associated with particular materials or procedures likely requires some form of risk assessment.
Heightened awareness grows out of strong training and frequent communication, two facets of an environment with a strong culture of safety. Communication with lab mates, supervisors, EHS staff, industry, and the broader community builds awareness at many levels. Awareness is a critical pillar of laboratory safety because it links the deeply personal aspects of being a laboratory researcher with the broader context of safety communication, training, and culture. It also helps address the challenge of implementing a constructive and supportive infrastructure.
Like any experience-based knowledge, safety awareness will vary significantly between individuals. Members of a group likely have had many of the same experiences, and thus often have overlap in their awareness. Effective mentoring can lead to further overlap by sharing awareness of hazards even when the mentee has not directly experienced the situation. Between groups in a department, however, where the techniques and hazards can vary tremendously, there is often little overlap in safety awareness. [bg][bh][bi][bj]In this section, we consider strategies to heighten researcher safety awareness at various levels through resources and tools that allow for intentional sharing of experiential safety knowledge.
Awareness Within an Academic Laboratory[bk]. …Some level of awareness[bl] will come through formal safety training, as was discussed in the preceding section. Our focus here is on heightened awareness through experiential learning, mindset development, and cultivating communication and teaching to share experience between researchers.
We have encountered or utilized several frameworks for building experience. One widely utilized model involves one-on-one mentoring schemes, where a more experienced researcher is paired with a junior researcher. This provides the junior researcher an opportunity to hear about many experiences and, when working together, the more experienced researcher can point out times when heightened awareness is needed. All the while, the junior researcher is running experiments and learning new techniques. There are drawbacks to this method, though. For example, the mentor may not be as experienced in particular techniques or reagents needed for the junior researcher’s project. Or the mentor may not be effective in sharing experience or teaching awareness. Gaps in senior leadership can develop in a group, leaving mentorship voids or leading to knowledge transfer losses. Like the game “telephone” where one person whispers a message to another in a chain, it is easy for the starting message to change gradually with each transfer of knowledge.[bm] This underscores the importance of effective mentoring,[bn] and providing mentors with a supportive environment and training resources such as SOPs and other documentation…
…Another approach involves discussing a hypothetical scenario, rather than waiting to experience it directly in the lab. Safety scenarios are a type of safety minute that provide an opportunity to proactively consider plausible scenarios that could be encountered.[bo][bp] Whereas many groups or departments discuss how to prevent an accident from happening again, hypothetical scenarios provide a chance to think about how to prevent an accident before it happens[bq][br]. Researchers can mediate these scenarios at group meetings. If a researcher is asked to provide a safety scenario every few weeks, they may also spend more time in the lab thinking about possible situations and how to handle them on their own.
Almost all of these methods constitute some form of risk or hazard assessment. As discussed in the training section, formal risk assessment has not traditionally been part of the academic regimen. Students are often surprised [bs]to learn that they perform informal risk assessments constantly, as they survey a procedure, ask lab mates questions about a reagent, or have a mentor check on an apparatus before proceeding. Intuition provides a valuable risk assessment tool, but only when one’s intuition is strong. A balance[bt] of formal risk assessment and informal, experiential, or intuition-based risk assessment is probably ideal for an academic lab.
…Checklists are another useful tool for checking in on safety awareness. [bu][bv][bw]Checklists are critically important in many fields, including aviation and medicine. They provide a rapid visual cue that can be particularly useful in high-stress situations where rapid recall of proper protocol can be compromised, or in high-repetition situations where forgetting a key step could have negative consequences. Inspired by conversations with EHS staff, the Miller lab recently created checklists that cover daily lab closing, emergency shutdowns, glovebox malfunctions, high-pressure reactor status, vacuum line operations, and more. The checklists are not comprehensive, and do not replace in-person training and SOPs, but instead capture the most important aspects that can cause problems or are commonly forgotten.[bx][by] The signage provides a visual reminder of the experiential learning that each researcher has accumulated, and can provide an aid during a stressful moment when recall can break down.
A unifying theme in these approaches is the development of frameworks for gaining experience with strong mentoring and researcher-centric continued education. Communication is also essential, as this enables the shared experiences of a group to be absorbed by each individual…[bz][ca]
[a]Wondering if these were determined by us news
[b]I can’t remember exactly what we did, but if we were writing this today; that is where I’d probably start. Plenty of discussion about how accurate/useful those rankings are, but in this instance, it serves as a good starting point
[c]If safety is not part of your mission statement or part of the your graduate student handbook, then this could cause issues with any disciplinary actions you may want to take. For instance, we had a graduate student set off the fire alarm twice on purpose in a research intense building. It was difficult for the department this person was part for actions to be taken.
We have a separate section on safety in our handbook “Chemical engineering research often involves handling and disposing of hazardous materials. Graduate
students must follow safe laboratory practices as well as attend a basic safety training seminar before starting
any laboratory work. In order to promote a culture of safety, the department maintains an active Laboratory
Safety Committee composed of the department head, faculty, staff and a student members which meets each
semester. Students are expected to be responsive to the safety improvements suggested by the committee,
to serve on the committee when asked, and utilize the committee members as a resource for lab safety
communication.”
[d]This is an interesting perspective on how others have prioritized safety.
[e]I find these sorts of things ring hollow given how little PIs or department leadership seem to know about what is happening in other people’s labs.
[f]I agree, particularly at the University level. However, a number of labs have mission statements, including the Miller lab, that mentions safety. I think at that level, it certainly can demonstrate greater intent
[g]Agreed. Having that language come from the PI is definitely different from having it come from the department or university – especially if the PI also walks the walk.
[h]So important because what is important to the professor becomes important to the student
[i]I definitely agree with this. I have always noticed that our students immediately reflect, pick up on, and look for what they think their professors deem most necessary/important essential.
[j]I think this is an underappreciated area. These are the conversations that help make safety a part of doing work, not just something bolted on to check a box or provide legal cover.
[k]Is this the same as safety moments?
[l]I would say somewhat? I’ve come to realize that these two terms are often used interchangeable, but can mean very different things. At UNC, what my lab called “safety minutes” would be a dedicated section of group meeting every week where someone would lead a hypothetical scenario or a discussion of how to design a dangerous experiment with cradle-to-grave waste planning. At other places; these can mean things as simple as a static slide before seminar.
[m]The inverse of my comment above. I think these have their place, but if they’re disconnected from what the group’s “really” there to talk about, they can reinforce the idea that safety isn’t a core part of research.
[n]Agreed. I’ve seen some groups implement this by essentially swiping “safety minutes” from someone else. While this could be a way to get started, the items addressed really should be specific to your research group and your lab in order to be meaningful.
[o]Note how all these examples are of the department holding its own researchers accountable, not EHS coming externally to enforce
[p]Yes! It doesn’t fight against the autonomy that’s a core value of academia.
[q]This is a good point. Can’t be a one-and-done although it often feels like it is treated that way.
[r]It seems like this practice would also build awareness and appreciation of the other lab settings and help to foster communication between groups.
[s]I would also hope that it would normalize reminding others about their PPE. I was surprised to find how many faculty members in my department were incredibly uncomfortable with correcting the PPE or behavior of a student from a different lab. It meant effectively that we had extremely variable approaches to PPE and safety throughout our department.
[t]LOVE this idea. I’m guessing it makes the PI reflect on safety of each student as well as start a conversation about what’s going well and ways to improve
[u]We’ve seen dramatic improvement in safety issue resolution once we implemented this kind of program.
[v]Note how the word assist is used. Important to emphasize that the PI is delegating some of their duties to the LSO and throughout the lab but they are ultimately responsible for the safety of their researchers.
[w]Really important point. Too often I’ve seen an LSO designated just so the PI can essentially wash their hands of responsibility and just hand everything safety related to the LSO. It is also important for the PI to be prepared to back their LSO if another student doesn’t want to abide by a rule.
[x]Wondering what the risk is of institutions taking advantage of LSO programs by putting tasks on researchers that should really be the responsibility of the facility or EHS
[y]At UMN and UNC, do these tasks/roles contribute towards progress towards degree?
[z]In my experience at UNC serving as an LSO, it does not relate to progressing one’s studies/degree in any way (though there is the time commitment component of the role). At UMN, I know departmentally they have stronger support for their LSOs and requirements but I would not say that serving as an LSO helps/hinders degree progression (outside again of potential time commitments).
[aa]Thanks! I’m glad to hear that it doesn’t seem to hurt, but I think finding ways for it to help could make a huge difference. Thinking back to my own experience, my advisor counseled us to always have that end goal in mind when thinking about how we spent our time. This was in the context of not prioritizing TA duties ahead of research, but it is something that could argue against taking on these sorts of tasks.
[ab]Yeah, I think that is a really important point. If you’re PI continuously stresses only the results of research/imparts a sense of speed > safety; the students will pick up on that and shift in that direction through a function of their lab culture. So the flipside is if you can build and sustain a strong culture of safety; it becomes an inherent requirement, not an external check
[ac]It is important to keep in mind that this work should be considered in relation to other duties and to somehow be equally shared out among lab members. Depending on how this work is distributed, it can become an incredibly time-consuming set of tasks for one person to constantly be handling.
[ad]I have struggled with how to get buy-in for production of written SOPs.
[ae]It also increases the likelihood that the researchers will be able to implement the controls!
[af]Important point. It is often difficult in grad school to admit when you don’t understand or know how to do something. It is critical to make sure that they understand what is expected. I ran a small pilot project in which I found out that all 6 “soon to be defending” folks involved in the pilot had no clue what baffles in a hood were. Our Powerpoint “hoods” training was required every year. Ha!
[ag]In addition, it serves as a review process to catch risks hazards that the first writer may not have thought of. In industry this is a common practice that multiple people must check off on a protocol before it is used.
[ah]As outlined in this section, a good idea. We’re also working toward development of collaboration between staff with safety functions. For instance, have building managers from one department involved in inspections of buildings of other departments.
[ai]Also to avoid re-inventing the wheel. If another group has this expertise and has done risk assessments on the procedure you’re doing, better to start there rather than from scratch. You may even identify items for the other group to add.
[aj]Bottom up approach works extremely well when you have departmental support but not so much when the Head of the Dept doesn’t care.
[ak]They also can’t be effective if the concerns that the JST raise aren’t taken seriously by those who can change policies.
[al]An additional advantage is displaying value for performing safety duties. I.e. The culture is developed such that you work is appreciated rather than an annoyance
[am]I’m curious to hear what discoveries have been made about this.
[an]At UConn, we were trying to use surveys to essentially prove to our department leadership and faculty safety committee that graduate students actually DID want safety trainings – we just wanted them to be more specific to the things that we are actually concerned about it lab (as opposed to the same canned ones that they kept offering). My colleagues have told me that they are actually moving forward with these types of trainings now.
[ao]We also started holding quarterly LSO meetings because we proved to faculty through surveys that graduate students actually did want them (as long as they were designed usefully and addressed real issues in the research labs).
[ap]We work with representatives from various campus entities, which brings us a variety of insights. Yes focused training is much more valuable, and feels more worthwhile, educating both the trainer and trainee.
[aq]This is an impressive way for department administration to show endorsement and support for safety efforts.
[ar]Another way departments can communicate their commitment towards safety.
[as]We have one of these, too, but we need to move away from it. Not augmentation, but replacement. I don’t know what that looks like yet, but a content dump isn’t it.
[at]Agreed. At UNC we actually have an annual requirement to review the laboratory safety manual with our PI in some sort of setting (requires the PI to sign off on some forms saying they did it). Obviously with the length, that isn’t feasible in its entirety; so we’d highlight a few key sections but yeah. Not the most useful document
[au]I see the CHP or lab safety manual as education/resources and the training as actually practicing behaviors that are expected of researchers, which is critical to actually enforcing policies
[av]Agreed. I always felt any “training” should actually be doing something hands-on. Sitting in a lecture hall watching a Powerpoint should not qualify as “training.”
[aw]Agreed as well Jessica. That is why now all our safety trainings are hands on as you stated. It has worked and come across MUCH better. Even with our facilities and security personnel.
[ax]I really like how continued training is embedded throughout regular day-to-day activities in many cases, this is important. I would add that it is important to have the beginning training available for refresher or reference as needed but don’t think it’s worth it to completely retake the online trainings.
[ay]Let me remind everyone that when a senior lab person shows a junior person how to do a procedure, training is occurring. Including safety aspects in the teaching is critical. Capturing this with a note in the junior person’s lab notebook documents it. The UCLA prosecution would not have occurred if the PD had done this with Ms. Sangji.
[az]I’m very curious to hear about examples of this.
[ba]Wow. Getting the PIs to do this would be awesome. I wonder what is the PI incentive. Part of their annual review?
[bb]Agreed, this seems like a big ask
[bc]In recognition of this our department has put together an on-line lab research mentoring guide and we’re looking for ways to disseminate info about it.
[bd]This works both ways; a mentee ending up with a mentor who doesn’t emphasize safety in their work might be communicating that to their mentees as well.
[be]This has been something I’ve been concerned about and am not sure how to address as an embedded safety professional.
[bf]Just a thought – It seems like there is a big overlap between continued training and developing awareness, which makes sense
[bg]In working with graduate students, I have found a really odd understanding of this to be quite common. Many think that they are only responsible for understanding what is going on in their own labs – and not for what may be going on next door.
[bh]So true. This is where EHS could really help departments or buildings define safety better. Most people may not be aware that the floor above them uses pyrophorics, etc.
[bi]I think this speaks to how insular grad school almost forces you to be. You spend so much time deepening your knowledge and understanding of your area of research that you have no time to develop breadth.
[bj]Yeah, these are great points. Anecdotally, at UNC when we started the JST we really struggled to get any engagement whatsoever out of the computational groups, even when their work space is across the hall from heavily synthetic organic chemistry groups. We didn’t really solve this, but I know it was and is something we’re chewing on
[bk]Not mentioned explicitly in this section, but documenting what is learned is critically important. As noted earlier in the paper, students cycle through labs. The knowledge needs to stay there.
[bl]From my perspective, awareness seems to be directly tied t the PIs priorities except for the 1 in 20 student.
[bm]It seems like something like this happened in the 2010 Texas Tech explosion.
[bn]This highlights the importance of developing procedures/protocols/SOPs, secondary review, and good training/onboarding practicing for specific techniques
[bo]These are always great discussions and fruitful.
[bp]Agreed. Even if you never encounter that scenario in your career, the process of how to think about responding to the unexpected is a generalizable skill.
[bq]I also think it is important to use something like this to help researchers think about how to respond to incidents when they do happen in order to decrease the harm caused by the incident.
[br]This is really great. I think a big part of knowing what to do when a lab incident occurs has a lot to do with thinking about how to respond to the incident before it happens.
[bs]I’m really glad this is included in here. Most of risk assessment is actually very intuitive but this highlights the importance of going through the process in a formal way. But the term is so unfamiliar to researchers sometimes that it seems unapproachable
[bt]I’m interested in learning how others judge the way to find this balance.
[bu]These are useful if the student doing the work develops the checklist otherwise it becomes just a checklist without understanding and thought. I see many students look at these checklist and ignore hazards because it is not on or part of the list.
[bv]Good point. It would likely be a good practice to periodically update these as well – especially encouraging folks to bring in things that they’ve come across that were done poorly or they had to clean up.
[bw]These are great points. The checklists we’ve designed try their best to highlight major hazards, but due to brevity it isn’t possible to cover everything. I think as Jessica pointed out, is that if they are reviewed periodically, that can be a huge boost in a way that reviewing and updating SOPs as living documents is also important
[bx]This is important – a good checklist is neither an SOP nor a training.
[by]I utilize checklists but sometimes see a form of checklist fatigue – a repeated user thinks they know it and doesn’t bother with the checklist.
So the comment about a GOOD checklist is applicable.
[bz]I’m impressed with the ideas and diversity and discussion of alternatives. It’s inspiring. However, I’m trying to institute a culture of safety where I am and many of these ideas aren’t possible for me. I’m in chemistry at a 2-year (community) college, and I don’t have TAs, graduate students, etc. We’re not a research institution which is somewhat of an advantage because our situations are relatively static and theoretically controllable . My other problem is I’m trying to carry the safety culture across the college and to our sister colleges, to departments like maintenance and operations, art, aircraft mechanics, welding etc.
I would love to see ways to address
1. just a teaching college
2. other processes across campus.
I head a safety committee but am challenged to keep people engaged and aware.
[ca]I’ve found some helpful insights from others about this sort of thing from NAOSMM. They have a listserv and annual conferences where they offer workshops and presentations on safety helpful for non-research institutions like to what you’re describing.