Designating a graduate student to act as a collateral duty safety advisor (or liaison) is a common occurrence at many research universities, including Northwestern University. Serving in such a capacity can be a daunting role for a graduate student for many reasons: including inexperience, conflicting time demands, lab and department culture, and the obvious hierarchal structure of academic research. The Research Student Safety Initiative (RSSI) is a graduate student led organization at Northwestern University established in the fall of 2017. In 2018, RSSI organized a panel discussion of current graduate student safety advisors from a number of research labs in our Chemistry Department. What we learned was clear—a key way to improve research safety and the collateral duty safety process was to shorten the learning curve by sharing past experiences, lessons learned, and practical information. In order to prepare graduate students (and others such as technicians and research faculty) for the safety advisor role, and with greater confidence, RSSI with support from Research Safety at Northwestern is developing a web-based training course. Current course topics include the identification and control of common lab hazards, writing concise and effective standard operating procedures, and how to navigate and carry out university specific compliance requirements and procedures. The curriculum is focused on developing the basic skills needed in conducting risk assessments, assigning tasks and accountabilities, techniques in conflict resolution, and the “tried and true” tricks of good lab management.The course will be launched in September 2019 to coincide with the beginning of the 2019-2020 academic year. RSSI looks forward to working with other schools to develop an eventual “best practices” curriculum for collateral duty safety advisors that would be used elsewhere to further the improvement of safety culture in academia.

Development of a short course for collateral duty safety advisors in academic research laboratories

2019 Fall National Meeting

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