Texas A&M University Health Science Center Occupational Safety and Health Training Center

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PROJECT SUMMARY The Occupational Safety and Health Training Program at the Texas A&M University Health Science Center's School of Public Health (TAMHSC SPH) delivers focused training in occupational safety and health, with available concentrations in safety, health, and ergonomics for masters level MPH students. Students completing the program possess knowledge and skills in the general concepts of developing problems and solutions with cost/benefit analysis related to occupational safety and health/wellness, ergonomics, industrial hygiene, occupational disease, human anatomy, user-computer interaction, displays and controls, information processing, industrial process safety, epidemiology, vibration control, and statistics. The Occupational Safety and Health program at TAMHSC SPH has a long history of producing highly qualified safety practitioners. The success of the program is demonstrated by the aggressive recruitment of TAMHSC SPH graduates by industry, healthcare, academia, and governmental agencies. Originally established in the TAMU College of Engineering through the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) ―Ergonomics Training Grant from 1995-2003, the program and course faculty transferred to TAMHSC SPH in 2002. The primary strengths of the TAMHSC SPH program are the extensive faculty expertise and experience in safety and health, medicine, engineering, industrial hygiene, and ergonomics; the program's critical ties to industry partners, enabling not only capstone field training opportunities and internships for students but placement of graduates in professional positions with these industry leaders; and the ability to attract a diverse student body via the school's commitment to and investment in innovative distributed learning technologies. TAMHSC SPH has been on the cutting edge of eLearning distributed learning technology since the school's inception in 1998. Qualified students in the Training Program may pursue their degree through a combination of on-campus, distance learning, or distributed learning methods. With the NIOSH training grant funding, this historically successful program will be able to recruit and retain, on a competitive basis, the best trainee candidates in the country. While the program has been able to recruit and maintain a highly qualified and successful faculty, including professional engineers, medical doctors, certified professional ergonomists, and certified industrial hygienists, the NIOSH funding is greatly needed and will assist in recruiting and retaining new, highly qualified students and faculty members. For this renewal, the program is seeking an increase of trainees from 2 per year at the masters level to 5 per year (3 masters level and 2 doctoral level) to support the growth we are seeing in our overall program size and to meet the demand for our students.