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Optimize Your Education with a Growth Mindset
Charmaine Mullins Jaime, PhD, CSP, CRSP, Assistant Professor, Safety Management, Bailey College of Engineering and Technology, Indiana State University
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Welcome to the 2023-24 school year! I'd like to thank you for pursuing studies in this very important field. Your time and effort today will translate into real-world impacts as future leaders in the field of health, safety, and environmental management and protection.
Some of you may be studying the topics of injury prevention, industrial hygiene, or environmental management for the first time and may feel overwhelmed by how much there is to learn. Wherever you can, develop a growth mindset, viewing shortcomings as learning opportunities and taking control of your learning by recognizing what approaches prompt anxiety and what approaches are optimal for you.
Try not to focus on perfection. Keep in mind the core purpose of this work and profession is to protect lives, so every effort that considers reducing the severity or likelihood of harm is one incremental step in the right direction. This attitude can also help you through some other subjects you might have to take as part of your program. You may not have seen their relevance at first, but you can now start to think about how to translate these fundamentals for the purpose of injury and illness prevention.
As you go through this school year, amidst an ever-changing world with ever-changing technology, don't forget to take time for your well-being and to form bonds and friendships. These relationships are important for your well-being and can help you feel grounded and resilient to challenges.
Wishing you all the best in this school year!
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Our discussion also touched on the intriguing topic of artificial intelligence, particularly AI/ChatGPT. We explored how to prepare students for an AI world, discussing potential policies, the incorporation of AI topics into the curriculum, and the use of tools to detect AI-generated assignments.
Looking ahead, we are excited to announce the formation of a QAP workgroup that will be led by faculty members. This group will continue working on establishing best practices in our field. We believe this will be a significant step forward in our collective journey toward preparing leaders in SH&E practice.
Stay tuned for more exciting updates from us! We look forward to continued collaboration toward safer workplaces.
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Showcasing Student Research
As part of the Research and Innovation Summit, BCSP and the BCSP Foundation welcomed nine rising stars in environmental health and safety to present findings from their graduate or doctoral research. This Student Research Showcase spanned topics ranging from ergonomics of hospital beds and ecotoxicity of river water to informal safety leadership, females in safety, and more.
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Matt Law presented findings from his Walden University doctoral research on the occupational risk perceptions of foreign-born workers in construction in Central Florida. Law discovered a significant relationship between not only a worker’s birthplace but also their age and their occupational risk perceptions.
“The importance behind that is that we've done a lot of research that links things like birthplace, age, education level, and size of the organization to safety outcomes," Law said. "We know that these factors put people at higher risk for injuries and fatalities. However, I can't change where you were born. I can't change your age. I can't change the size of the organization."
"But what I can change is something like a risk perception, which can be addressed through things like training and better organizational culture. So the importance of this is demonstrating that we can quantify risk perceptions and start to link vulnerabilities to that, so we know how to address these things rather than just saying these things are killing people.”
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Continuing research based on the findings of these presenters will help shape the future of safety.
The student presenters at the R&I Summit included:
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An Interview with Rachel Nieves, GSP and QAP Scholarship Recipient | |
Rachel Nieves followed some motherly advice when it came to studying industrial hygiene in college, and it paid off.
A recipient of a 2022 BCSP Foundation Qualified Academic Program (QAP) Scholarship, she parlayed an internship at Savage Services into a full-time job with the global provider of industry infrastructure and supply chain logistics.
Now, less than a year removed from graduation, Nieves is "loving every minute" of her role as a safety, health, and environment supervisor for occupational health and hygiene.
Read Rachel's Story
| "Something my mentors have taught me is that there’s no growth in the comfort zone and no comfort in the growth zone. They helped me hone skills I didn’t know I had, and they helped me perform better than I thought I could." — Rachel Nieves, GSP | | | | | | |
