The Community Connections Committee (CCC) was established in late 2020 to connect the work of the University of Minnesota (UMN) Joint Safety Team (JST) to the larger MN community. Our initial goal was to establish relationships with primarily undergraduate institutions (PUIs), high schools, and local chemical industries. The CCC is comprised of graduate students and postdoctoral researchers at various stages of their chemical careers, broken into three subcommittees: demonstration safety, industry connections, and PUIs and high schools connections.<br/>The demonstration safety subcommittee aims to develop resources for safe scientific demonstrations that are accessible to the diverse audiences in our community. With the help of our committed members, we provide standard operational procedures and safety videos, making lecture-demonstrations easy and safe to perform by teachers, parents, and more experienced experimenters.<br/>The high schools and PUIs connections subcommittee was created to be the graduate bridge for earlier degree levels, helping further safety education and building better safety practices. The PUIs inspired by our work approach us, and we subsequently work closely with them, with the aim of the creation of their own student-led safety teams. With our high school connections, we have organized a workshop designed to support the secondary teachers attending through professional development incentives while discussing better safety practices and providing instruction on taking more proactive control over safety culture. We expect to supply teachers with the tools to better prepare their students to enter college with a greater understanding and appreciation for proper safety conduct.<br/>Finally, the industry connections subcommittee aims to create a mutually beneficial partnership with industries and national labs. This provides an early look at what safety practices are like beyond academia. The subcommittee hosts programs with different companies to discuss safety standards and practices in professional environments. Participating companies from this past year include 3M and PPG industries, and we are eager to grow with new collaborators.<br/>The combined work of the subcommittees of the CCC enables the JST and our safety conversation to reach from ground-level education to specialized speakers. This makes us a powerful asset for improving safety culture in new communities, taking the change we made in our university beyond UMN.

Vertical safety engagement through new community connections committee of the UMN joint safety team

Fall 2022 abstracts, posters, and presentations will launch in mid-September.

ACS Fall 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.