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121: From School Teacher to Associate Professor of Occupational Safety
253 Plays7 days ago
Meet Dr. Jan Handwerk, Associate Professor of Occupational Safety at the University of Central Oklahoma. Dr. Handwerk discusses the challenges she faced throughout her diverse career in male-dominated industries, from teaching physical education to working as a utility substation mechanic, including issues with properly fitting PPE. She emphasizes the importance of effective communication skills for safety professionals and shares insights on the evolving safety landscape, noting the shift from reactive to more preventive approaches. Dr. Handwerk also discusses the "Safety Olympics" she helped establish, which allows safety students from various universities to compete and network. Listen now to hear about the experiences and perspectives of a seasoned safety professional dedicated to educating the next generation of EHS leaders.
University of Central Oklahoma Bachelor of Science in Occupational Safety
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Transcript
00:00:09
Speaker
This is the Accidental Safety Pro, brought to you by HSI. This episode is recorded September 6, 2024. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer, and today my guest is Dr. Jan Hanwerk. She is Associate Professor of Occupational Safety at the University of Central Oklahoma. Jan joins us today from Edmond, Oklahoma. Welcome to the show. Thanks.
00:00:34
Speaker
Well, I was so excited to meet you the first time that I saw you across the screens at and NSC's women's division. And I'm like, oh man, this woman's got a story and a life. And I'm so grateful that you decided to say yes to being a guest. My pleasure. Yeah. So Jen, how many years have you been in this profession? Since 1982.
00:01:04
Speaker
Yeah, a long time. A long time. Fabulous. A lot of experience um for our listeners to learn from. Before you became a professor, if we rewind and go way in the way back machine, how in the heck did this start for you? Like what got yeah what got you into this before we get into the education piece? yeah yeah Well,
00:01:29
Speaker
When I graduated college, way back, so this is a brief piece, I graduated college with a teaching degree in physical education and went back and got a biology and math upgrade so I could teach math and science and physical education. I was part of all of that, of course, and in science, you learn about safety so you don't blow any fingers are off in class or in safety and in physical education and coaching and make sure Our athletes are well-tuned and our students in class don't get hurt on a balance beam. So it was always part of my psyche as a young professional at teaching. I'm also fortunate to come from a blue-collar family and saw some firsthand stuff about what happened in a workplace. And my grandfather almost had gotten killed.
00:02:21
Speaker
in the construction accident early on in the 1950s. And I vividly remember that as a child um with with my grandparents and my mother and and things like that. ah So I saw firsthand some of those things that happened in the workplace. Didn't think much about it.
00:02:37
Speaker
I taught for a while. you know I went out and I taught professionally for a while, and and I decided that i I wanted to leave teaching ah for a few for a few reasons. I left teaching and took a position as a utility construction substation mechanic is what it was back then. It was called an electrician mechanic with a utility company.
00:03:00
Speaker
How did you make that switch? oh know The children finances- No, I just meant like how, not why. I mean, that's a big shift. Well, not really. I worked my way through college and i worked for and people maybe my age would remember the old Admiral TV.
00:03:23
Speaker
um I worked for the Admiral TV company making televisions way back when they had tubes. And so I worked i worked in electronics and and I was fortunate enough to be trained a little bit through Admiral Corporation as a worker into some of the electrical pieces. So when there was a job that opened an electrical company, I thought, gee, that's great. I love being outdoors. I like, of course, being an athlete, so that was going to give me some oh activity, my family comes from construction, so I'm familiar with that. And the job opened up and I thought, gee, this would be great. So I just needed a change. And I was hired. And that's how I got into the utilities. Wonderful. Jan, I've got a couple questions. Oh, we're going back to- No, no, this is good. I'm just curious. All right. Where did you grow up? Fort Lee, New Jersey.
00:04:19
Speaker
And george washington if anybody doesn't know where that is, it's right across the bridge from New York City um' at 168th Street, if you know New York City, at the Bronx. And it was the George Washington Bridge. And you may remember a few years ago about Bridgegate with the big stink where they closed the George Washington Bridge for construction and backed up traffic up there for a political stunt. I'm from Fort Lee.
00:04:46
Speaker
And you mentioned you're an athlete. What was your what was your sport of choice or what maybe still is? Well, my sport of choice, I was in track and field. I lettered in track and field before Title IX and I also played basketball and so forth.
00:05:04
Speaker
Okay, so back to the substation. Thank you for that context because I was wondering how math and science teacher went into the utility industry. This makes sense now. Well, my my grandfather, you know, back in the day, there was no childcare, so my mother would drop us off down at the where my granddad was at the construction company and the big cement mixers and all of that. We'd play in the buckets and fill it with water of the big bulldozers and that was our swimming pool for a while. so we didn't get we We made it to puberty, so I guess we were safe at some point. I guess it worked. I grew up, my mom worked for a period of time at a ready mix. yeah would i would I would go to the ready mix office after after school, and she was you know doing calculations, measuring, and doing estimating for yards of concrete and things. Yeah. I'd go visit my granddad who looked like a snowman because he was working a jackhammer with no protective equipment other than a bandana on his face.
00:06:03
Speaker
Man, silica exposure. absolutely thing yeah Absolutely. Okay, thank you for that. Thank you for that. you know divergent off of your trail. So back to the substation job. So because I took a job as a substation mechanic. I mean, I was an athlete, so I i was on five, seven and a half and I was an athlete, so I was i was muscular. ah So it wasn't like i I and I did go in a dress at that time to be interviewed, of course. um And they
00:06:35
Speaker
took a shot at me and I went into work and went through my my apprenticeship, Local 2 out of St. Louis. and um They saw that the college degree helped, ah being the teacher helped. um They asked me to fill in one time for a safety meeting, and I did. And they were impressed. They asked me to fill in one time in a CPR first aid course, and I hit a home run. And at that point, I was kind of asked, would I get involved at safety? And that's how I got into safety initially. From there, it's history.
00:07:14
Speaker
yeah Yeah, so what happened in that history then? So you got turned on to onto the field. I did. i got i got turned What I got turned onto was lousy training, ah being a teacher. yep I got into having to go in and have a bunch of adults sit there and read a book or read an article and then have a discussion when most of these folks weren't avid readers.
00:07:43
Speaker
on nor were we geared to reading in our job classification, not to the extent of scholarly reading. So um um we would get the National Safety Council handouts because my my Safety guy was fantastic, and he's still alive, and I want to throw out a kudos to to Claude Hawkins in Lee's Summit, Missouri, because he was the guy that said, you have something special. Would you like to join us? And and that's essentially how I got into safety full time, because as ah as a person, as a mechanic, as a safety person in the field, I was
00:08:22
Speaker
were rewarded for having a college degree. And I eventually found myself in a supervisory position in the office where I was able to do other things. But what really turned me on was that these guys deserve better. And what we're giving them is not. And I was so grateful that National Safety Council had those little weekly handouts. And Claude bought those. And I would expand those little handouts to be appropriate for what we were doing in the workplace that week, which which then became, I guess, you know the JSA attitude of here's what we're going to be facing this week, here's what's going on, and I would combine some of the handouts we got from safety counsel into safety training.
00:09:07
Speaker
And that's how that all started. And when the company saw that I had an ability to do that, they offered me a position in safety training and development. And um I had 17 locations where I oversaw safety training in three two states because we had part of Illinois as well. So I did safety and technical training then for almost 15 years before I left. Well, you had quite a trifecta going for you. I mean, the teaching background, you had the you had the knowledge of the actual work because you did it. if been And and you had the the you know, the the technical information that you needed from the National Safety Council that you were able to put all those things together. That's beautiful.
00:09:54
Speaker
Yeah, lesson planning. That's what you think as a teacher. It's lesson planning. Essentially, that's what I introduced to everything. I was fortunate. As I like to say, that's the early days of safety.
00:10:06
Speaker
because full protection wasn't even in place for, and remember, this is utilities. So there was a lot of other general industry stuff in place, and we were utilities, which was a whole different world out there at the time. And OSHA itself as an agency was really still in its infancy. listen the yeah yeah So 15 years at that, then what happened? Well, ah after a total of 18 years, there was a lot of downsizing going down. And at that point, if everybody remembers the economy,
00:10:37
Speaker
And they wanted to not eliminate, but, you know, pare back, pare down on some ah departments, ours being one of them. And I really didn't want to do that much more traveling. I was traveling 80% of the time and it was getting wearisome for me. Even though I enjoyed what I was doing, knew was it was still a hard task. And we had taken on a merger and extended my travel, clear up almost almost to Chicago and you know between Excelsior Springs and Kansas to Chicago. That was more than I wanted to tackle. So at that time, the University of Missouri was looking for a safety person. They wanted to start a safety program. So I went to the University of Missouri in Columbia and I was hired on as their safety coordinator and we developed the safety program for the University of Missouri. Wow. So you're a founder of that.
00:11:32
Speaker
Fantastic. Does it live today? Yes. yes at the time At the time University, and I don't want to um say anything bad about the University of Missouri, University of Missouri had a wonderful yeah EHS department. It it dealt with 14,000 employees at the time, um and twice as many students, and it was environmentally centered, and they offered safety training. They really did, and and and it was quality safety training.
00:12:00
Speaker
yeah But the department, being laborers, felt a need to have a full time safety person there. sure outside of what our environmental health and safety group was doing because they, of course, did all the chemicals. We had our nuclear reactor. We had the fire systems and all of that. So the university decided to put on a safety coordinator for the fourth for the ah a worker, work staff at the facilities group, the construction maintenance. you know That's the gang that needed some help, power plant, all of that. And with my utility background,
00:12:35
Speaker
I fit in, not only in the construction maintenance piece of that business, but also with custodial services and the power plant. So I took that position and stayed there for, I don't know, maybe six years, and then 9-11 hit.
00:12:52
Speaker
and I had family out east and the day that happened I was teaching CPR on first aid and one of the office staff came and said something hit the World Trade Center and I thought at first I said always something's always hitting something out there because it was not unusual for planes to to hit things occasionally because of the the the size of buildings but when I went out on break and saw what was going on they had brought in a television feed, a TV feed, and um my heart dropped. And I immediately told my boss, I said, I need to call home. And I called home and I couldn't get anybody. And I called my cousin who was working in the building and i couldn't answer he nobody answered. And that was before cell phones, so I was you know on a regular dial phone looking. And I finished the day, went home, and it was eight o'clock that night when I was finally able to get hold of my mother.
00:13:48
Speaker
And they were okay. And the my brother-in-law, we couldn't find my brother-in-law who was in the Pentagon at that time. My sister didn't know it was going my sister didn't know what was going on in Germany.
00:14:02
Speaker
She was teaching in Germany in Dodds, and she went to lockdown, so she didn't know what was going on. um Yeah, so after all of that happened, I decided that I wanted to move back east and be closer to my family, like yeah because my parents were elderly. So at that point, I left the University of Missouri, and I went to work um in GM, had GM up in Buffalo, through a third party.
00:14:28
Speaker
And I did oversaw the construction safety for the $354 million Tano Wanda engine plant ah redo. And so I moved up to Buffalo so I could be closer to my family.
00:14:42
Speaker
Well, so you had a, did I get this right? A brother-in-law in the towers. and No, no, he was at the Pentagon. He was at the Pentagon and a cousin. and And my cousin was an electrician in a basement. And my uncle was a policeman at the police ah police officer and on the railroad. And I didn't know where anybody was. And it was the worst day of my life. Yeah, I believe it. I believe it. Yeah.
00:15:11
Speaker
We all have our memory. We all have our memory. Right. And, and you know, I needed to be, ah young neola being the only child to elderly parents in the States, I needed to get up there because my sister was not, my sister was in DAWDS and she was teaching overseas. So yeah i made I made the conscious decision to leave where I was and and try to get back to the East Coast because my parents were elderly. So how long did you stay in Buffalo?
00:15:38
Speaker
Oh, that's when the bug bit me. I was in Buffalo. That's when the PhD bug bit me. I was in Buffalo and I was doing healthcare up there for Ascension Health after I left General Motors. I left General Motors. I left General Motors because I couldn't work the hours. My mom had developed Alzheimer's, so I was having to travel back and forth to New Jersey at the time. And I made the decision to move my mother up to my home in Buffalo, so we added an addition to my house.
00:16:08
Speaker
And I moved my mother up and at that point I couldn't work with the mandate. I had a lot of hours at GM. It was averaging 60, 70 hours a week. And I was, like I couldn't get, I was the only caregiver to my mom. So there was ah a hospital position open. A friend of mine was the occupational health nurse and said, hey, they're starting a safety program for employees. You want a job? And I was like, yeah, this would be great. And I went up there and became a, ah that was my first my first introduction to healthcare care safety for workers.
00:16:37
Speaker
And we developed a workplace safety program up there. We got a grant. and We developed that. We had a wonderful grant that was supplied to us and we were able to outfit a lot of patient rooms with lifting devices for the nurses because when I got there, um we had we were 24 man years in a small hospital. It was 24 worker years of back injuries ah from the nursing staff and we reduced that with the grant and a safety program down to two.
00:17:09
Speaker
after three years of working in the program. It was that time when a friend of mine from ASSE at the time said, hey, I'm going on sabbatical. You want to teach you want to teach my yeah safety classes? So I said, okay. So I went down to Buffalo State College, which is in the Siri system, and took took safety I taught this safety classes while he was gone. And the and the teaching bug bit me.
00:17:35
Speaker
Yeah. And I decided to go and get my master's degree. Uh-huh. So I got my master's degree, absolutely fell in love with education all over again. Did you get it in in education or what did you, okay. I got it in education, yeah, with the safety. Yeah, of course, social foundations of education because I thought that would be the best fit for me because I'd been out of teaching for a while and I wanted to see how the social foundations had changed in education over the years. So I did that as my yeah you know center of focus. But I did my comps on women in safety. When I did my comprehensive exams, that was my my project was on women's safety. And at that point, I had a professor say, you really ought to go for your PhD. And I thought, well, and thought about it and thought about it. But gee, that would be a great retirement job.
00:18:26
Speaker
doing something I don't know. Yeah, right. Go get a PhD just for fun. So that's what I did. And I had a choice of five universities in the North, including Canada and Oklahoma. And I said to my dad who was living with us and my mom, of course, dad, I've got this opportunity You know, I'm explaining to him and I will, I'll leave the swear words, out but he wanted to go somewhere. He wanted to go somewhere hot. The Buffalo winters just weren't his style. So I thought, okay, we'll go to Oklahoma. And we came down here. That's how I got here. But it's my PhD and now I'm teaching. Oh my gosh. ah So Jan, on the when you're working on your master's degree and you did a focus on women and safety, the tell us a little bit about that.
00:19:16
Speaker
As a woman in safety, my PPE never fit. so i mean that's i think that's a I think that's a given for any woman in the profession, that at some point something doesn't fit. and In my job at the utility company, they told me of course to the boots, put socks in them.
00:19:34
Speaker
So I would have six or seven pairs of socks on to try to get into my utility. And they gave us PPE because we were around high voltage. And so you know I'd wear that. And we had switching gloves, which were 20,000 volt gloves that we used if we did switching and stuff because we were around 161,000 volts. And my gloves would fall off when I wore them. I used to have to walk with my hands in the air so my gloves didn't fall off.
00:20:02
Speaker
and lord yeah And I do remember one time throwing a switch. It's a big switch handle where you take two hands and you manually shove this thing open and three big switches, 20 feet of air open to break the line. So it's like a big circuit breaker. And I remember losing one of my gloves. And the rule was you never stand under a switch when you switch it out because if the switch is broken, it'll come down on your head. So you always kind of did the switch and run.
00:20:30
Speaker
And they were my gloves sitting on the ground. And it just so happened that Claude was there, my my safety my safety person. And he turned right around. He says, this is not. Get her out of those gloves. Don't do anything until we get her gloves. And then he saw my boots. And he says, what? And then he took me personally to find a pair of boots that fit me. And as an apprentice, I didn't know that wasn't OK to have PPE that didn't fit.
00:20:58
Speaker
I thought that was okay. I thought it was okay to stuff stuff in my hat to make my hard hat fit. I thought it was acceptable to wear six or seven pairs of socks for my boots. And it was after two years of working that I realized that it wasn't okay if my personal protective equipment didn't fit.
00:21:19
Speaker
And you know that became the center of what I was doing. And when I went to work at the utility, it was okay for me to have long hair and earrings, but the men had to keep their hair short and not wear earrings. Yeah, interesting. And that became obvious to me. And I questioned my boss. I said, how come it's okay for me to have long hair and wear earrings? It's not okay for them. Yeah. And he didn't say anything. I did cut my hair. I cut my hair and I didn't wear jewelry just because.
00:21:58
Speaker
of the guys, you know reference to the guys. And that all hit me when I was working on my masters, especially looking at the philosophy of of things that I was looking at and I was able to study some of the women's movement stuff. We very much looked at a lot of the women's movements, the early women's movement, the Lowell girls, you know things like that. And it became really interesting to me that here I worked, I like to call myself the unrealized feminist Here it was in the 1990s and I had completely missed the feminist movement because I was it.
00:22:32
Speaker
you know you but yeah i was it I was in the work field and I was thinking, wow, no all of this was going on while I was busting my tail and you know having to put up with all those things these people are writing about. so i it be well It really became interesting to me and um I decided to study it. so That's that's kind of how I got into this women's studies thing. I ah kind of lived through it, now going back and studied about it.
00:22:59
Speaker
makes so much sense we have some of stories that probably would match some of the things I had to read about. I was kind of like a walking history book to some of these students. Exactly. Exactly. Oh my gosh, maybe we should do an entire episode just on the interesting things that we've seen and experienced.
00:23:17
Speaker
Well, today I think, and i don't quote me, i you know I'm going to ballpark this, roughly 2,000 members are only women in ASSE, ASSP, excuse me. yeah There's like only 2,000 of us. yes Yes, that's right. We're still we're still absolutely a minority. i i'm you know As you're describing, you're six pairs of socks.
00:23:37
Speaker
I was just at ASSP's national conference in Denver, a few, I don't know, it's probably been a month now or something um from this recording. And I don't know if you've been there when they have the PPE, what's it called? They have a, you know, like a fashion, it's a fashion show. favorite you know Yeah.
00:24:02
Speaker
Yeah, and I'm just, as you're describing what it was that you were wearing working in the utility industry, I so though i saw those clothes in the in the runway show and how well they fit women now. and Yeah, that and FR clothing, you know look at the FR clothing. yeah It was made for a man's hips, not for mine. I have an eye of Italian descent and I like to consider myself more like a Da Vinci picture. and yeah you know they don't They just don't fit me. And women are ah built differently and need things to fit properly. And the EFR clothing is is one that really, really upset me. And when I went down to Congress last week, National Safety Council last year, Congress, I couldn't believe the EFR clothing and they were bragging that they have women's clothing and it had a pink stripe.
00:24:59
Speaker
to differentiate from the men. And it's like, why would I want to differentiate from the men? I mean, even today, and I, in one way, and this, this, this person was just delighted that we had women's, you know, PPE out that fit word. And here's the F4 clothing for the firemen, or for the fire, excuse me, say firemen, firefighters. And it was like pink.
00:25:24
Speaker
yeah The other thing that really just chews on me is the reflective clothing because the standard requires a certain amount of square inches. That's right. and you know When does the PPE become the hazard?
00:25:41
Speaker
but right but right But by golly, we've got that square inches of of well reflective material on that thing. So you know we'll see. We'll see. There's hope. At least there's a few things. i mean Women don't drive this. Money drives this. And until enough voices are out in the field working, and and we are increasing in numbers in the field, manufacturers aren't going to change their mind for the good of it.
00:26:08
Speaker
That's right. And FYI manufacturers, we don't need stuff that's pink. I'm not saying pink's a bad thing. If the guys want to wear pink, make it in guy sizes too. I just give somebody a choice. yeah Just buy the pink one. yeah i you know First day i first I went to work at the university, I had a pink hard hat on my desk.
00:26:34
Speaker
a And I picked up the pink card ad and in the same part was my boss thought this was just great. And I thought okay. All right. All right. All right. I was so excited to see at the FR clothing you're talking about that they're making bras and underwear that are FR rated as Absolutely, yes, yes, yes. The static electricity used to get me like crazy. And I mean, it's not even F-4, but it was static electricity when i in on my underwear when I was around switching. I you know i tried to find plastic clips on my underwear, you know, not to get electric shock every time I turned around with all the static electricity. And back then, there wasn't F-4 with clothing. Back then, you had to wear 20 ounce cotton.
00:27:20
Speaker
Yeah, when i when I was in training, um working for OSHA, ah a mentor, an early mentor of mine, Richard was his name, he former Air Force, and he just also didn't know what to do with me because he hadn't worked with a lot of women in his life. So he'd always call me guy and it was hilarious. um And I loved him. um And we went to our first grain elevator together. And before we went the day before we went to do the inspection, he he he calls me and he's like, you know, I know how you women like to wear your
00:27:56
Speaker
you know, like nylon underwear. He said, I need you to wear cotton underwear tomorrow. ah All right. ah ah lordy Got it. Message received. Okay, understood. He's like, you don't want that stuff melting to your skin. I'm like, thanks, Richard. Appreciate it. Well, nowadays, nowadays, everybody's wearing you know, the Under Armour and Nylon and Rayon. then I don want to bounce down against Under Armour. They've got some really good stuff out there for workplace now. They've got a workplace line. So I'm really pleased with what I saw. But we had so many a um so many people wanting to stay
00:28:39
Speaker
in Volga that they they sometimes make poor choices. And they had the fear that I always had as safety was I don't check people's underwear. And you know I would only be able to harp on it and i in a safety meeting as to what they needed to protect them. And I was fortunate to work for a company that actually bought a bunch of this stuff and would take care of it for the for the workers. yeah And they would bring the stuff in for ah all the fire retardant. And they would they would maintain it for us.
00:29:09
Speaker
We'd have a change out program with them and everything. I think if companies, if you're if you're a safety person with a company that's doing that, you really, really have it well. You got it good because to try to, you know how do you teach them not to wash it? you know't Right, exactly. you don't have You don't have any control over that. i think I think most companies that can afford it are using the change out programs from the suppliers that'll that give it. And there's so many of them that do that now.
00:29:39
Speaker
Yeah, I think there's a lot to learn from, you know, like at the healthcare care industry, and you worked in that, that's, that's, you know, known for having clothing that people wear that is often laundered by the employer. um You know, that there's something to be learned there. And anytime in biosecurity with animals, I worked in the poultry industry.
00:30:00
Speaker
And same thing, it was employers employer provided clothing and laundered by the employer as well. isn't um you know And it was for, of course, the biosecurity of the product. um But there's a lot to learn about, you know like, this works, this works. And it can it can work into safety as well, for more than- Yeah. And then again, if we look at, you know what in a big and the big thing about safety is, if we can eliminate the hazard, we don't have to worry about the PPE.
00:30:29
Speaker
Yeah, right. Exactly. So Jan, you're in Oklahoma, you finish your PhD. Congratulations. but And, and, and who Hey, who showed up for your graduation? Did you walk? Of course. I I walked. Nobody. I didn't my family, my family, they all watched it on streaming video.
00:30:55
Speaker
ah Oh, man. Nobody was able to get there, but a friend of mine. And of course, my advisor who was there. But my everybody saw it on the station live stream. Yeah, wonderful. So people overseas and everything were able to see it. So you're teaching now.
00:31:14
Speaker
How long has that been part of your life? and is I mean, you said you said you wanted to do this because it would be a great retirement gig. Oh, yeah, it's great. Is that where you were at? No, I love it. I love it. I love it. um but You know, we're here. At the end of my PhD, it was like I didn't save enough money to quit my job. So I took a job my last year and a half here in in Oklahoma and a manufacturing plant.
00:31:38
Speaker
And my boss was great. He says, oh, you can, you know, don't have a problem, you know, finish your, do your writing, do whatever you need to do, you know, allow yourself time to do all of this, except sometimes in safety, you can't allot time to it. ah So I wound up working for a couple of years there and and quitting to finish my writing. And I went ahead and finished my PhD and took a position as an adjunct, because all I ever wanted to do was teach at the University of Central Oklahoma. When I came down here, I just fell in love with that place. And I didn't i wasn't living in Edmonton at the time. I was living south of here in Norman, near the University of Oklahoma. And I thought, wow, I just i really like this school. It reminded me so much of Buffalo State.
00:32:21
Speaker
It's a smaller school, it's the largest of the regional schools, but it's a nice well-knit, it's a close well-knit group of learners and educators. And I absolutely fell in love with the place. So I took an adjunct position there because that's where I wanted to teach. I didn't want to teach anywhere else. And so when a full-time position opened a year and a half later, I applied for it and got it. But it was a visiting position, which was only year to year.
00:32:48
Speaker
And then eventually a full-time tenure track opened, then I took it. So I've been near, let's see, I just got tenure in promotion. So that's five, six, seven, maybe eight years since, hey, since eight, well, 2016, since I finished my PhD. Wow. Congratulations. So 18.
00:33:06
Speaker
And I love it. so and yeah so who's So who's coming to the profession now? Like, what does enrollment look like? What are you seeing? It's interesting out here. um We're really oil and gas. We're really a lot of oil and gas out here and manufacturing and construction. um So what I'm seeing coming in here, it's kind of an interesting mix. I'm getting folks in here from high school, of course.
00:33:32
Speaker
I'm getting young folks in here and I'm saying young folks, those people, I'm going to call them emerging adults. Emerging adults are or those age groups that are on their own away from their parents. Does that make sense? so I don't want to say that teenagers are just graduated. They're emerging one of those they're emerging adults. there They're not quite at home and they're not quite out on themselves yet.
00:33:54
Speaker
but they're they've got their own apartment, they're starting to pay their own bills. So we're seeing, ah because i you know juniors and seniors are mostly my my my group because it's a two-year major, we're seeing that emerging adults coming with not much work experience. The other 40%, and I think it's up to 40% now, are returning adults.
00:34:18
Speaker
ah that are coming either either because of whatever life experience has them looking toward a degree to come back to college and they choose safety or in a case where I have students that are in safety in their job that want to do it professionally. So I have this great mix of knowledge about the field and workplaces and no knowledge about workplaces.
00:34:45
Speaker
So what I've got are groups of people that either know what a hammer does or they have no ham clue how many hammers exist. So it makes it really difficult for me at times to think through of who needs what and how will I help make the best safety professional. Does a safety, and go into these real philosophical things. That's what you get when you take social foundations is, here we go, we're going to do the thinking thing.
00:35:13
Speaker
can i Are they effective if they don't know anything about the job?
00:35:19
Speaker
And we look at that as a group. We've got a fantastic faculty. Every one of us have been practitioners in the field. ah So we've got a really great blend of faculty that have work acknowledge of the field. We're not academics.
00:35:36
Speaker
So we put into place, I didn't, it was there when I got there. We have a wonderful internship where we get these kids, where we get these emerging adults out into the field to see what work looks like. yeah And that concerns me to a point, what are we putting out there? Are we putting out there people that are very knowledgeable without the practical piece that has to happen?
00:36:03
Speaker
You know, that that's the scary, that's the and I say that as a scary part only because I come from the other end. I come from the end where these workers came back to college and took safety on for whatever reason. These folks are taking safety on and having no idea, and it's kind of like you did with OSHA. You know what OSHA kind of did until you saw your first fatality, and you know you come from a blue collar family too, so you have you know more of an understanding of people get hurt in the job. That's the piece that I always am concerned about when we talk to these young folks coming in or these emerging adults that haven't been in a workforce before. There's nothing for them to relate to. Right, exactly. And I think about that with my you know with my own emerging um adult.
00:36:54
Speaker
and who's an engineer and um you know that the right and so the dis the decisions that that he'll make that will impact you know the ah the labor force ah for without his personal knowledge of it um is always of concern to me like how can he get that how can he get that knowledge how can he gain that knowledge short of actually getting a job like that. How can we teach them to focus on them? how you know It's it's my my ASP GSPs, my GSPs. My GSPs know this stuff like like the back of their hand and you know we can do a JSA and we can do an accident investigation.
00:37:45
Speaker
And how do I put the emotion in there? And I hit and head i don't want to do it too much. But yeah, we can show them pictures. Yeah, we can do this. Yeah, we can do that. And I think i think the emotional buy-in has to come after they graduate, whereas some of the returning adults have an emotional buy-in as they enter the program.
00:38:08
Speaker
And if there's one piece, and we can talk about cultural safety you know and all that, but there's that one piece that as a professor, I sit there and I say, I hope they grow into. you know Whereas those folks that are coming in from the field,
00:38:27
Speaker
have that and I hope they are able to divorce themselves to what they know and see what's available because safety has come from a reactive stage to now a proactive stage in our history. you know For so long we were reactive. Ergo, there's OSHA.
00:38:43
Speaker
But now we're into a proactive, and that's the piece that your emerging adult is going to get into, is that proactive piece. And I think that's i think that's the positive piece of these students not having any field experience that were looking at a proactive way to do something. So when they go out in the field and they see a tool being misused,
00:39:06
Speaker
they're going to look at it from a proactive eye instead of me coming from a safety background in the early days saying as a reactive. Does that make sense? It does make sense. And it it does make sense. And what you're describing is two sides of a coin, right? So the the advantages and disadvantages of both.
00:39:24
Speaker
um the emerging adults in there and their they academics and the people that are coming in with all the experience. and and Right. right and I think you know when I talked to you the first time, and and you know i have it's ah it's a funny thing, it's the first time I was teaching this first fundamentals class, they call it. I walked in there and we're talking about hammers and I saw always blank stairs and I went out and I you know got a half a dozen hammers, different types of hammers, and I threw them on a table. I says, okay, what do these hammers all do?
00:39:53
Speaker
I had these blank stairs. I was like two people that knew the difference between a ball peen hammer, a claw hammer, a roofing hammer, but and a concrete hammer. yeah And it was like, everybody, wow, there's different hammer. And that's what ah hit me was like, wow, because we were talking about a JSA looking at tools, right? Tools for the job. and and you know And I always joke with how many of you use the screwdriver as a hammer.
00:40:19
Speaker
you know, her the hands all go up, or how many have used it a chair as a ladder and all hands go up, you know, we talk about it. But that was the one that I walked in and I walked into my voice and they said, they don't know what Hammers do. And then we started to revise. oh And so when you do these internships through the university, is it at the end of the academic experience? or No. or yeah Okay, good. Yeah. They get to do several. I mean, they don't, they're not,
00:40:48
Speaker
They're not left to one. We have a wonderful, our department chair is wonderful. he He's got contacts. He's got contacts throughout this area in different states, big companies. We out we currently have people going to Halliburton and to Goodyear and you know big, big companies too that give these folks um opportunities. We have people that went to work at Boeing.
00:41:14
Speaker
And we're offered full-time positions. So many of our internships turn into full-time positions for these graduates, which which great. you know and But we have aeronautics. We have an airport here. The FAA helps us. so oil and gas construction, everything everything under the sun, including healthcare, in our room. We like to tell our students to take something that you don't know about, take something that may not be of interest to you at least once, and see what it really offers you. It gives you more world around. We've got students that come back and say, oh, I never thought of going into transportation, but I really loved it. and and They wind up with a job, I'm very happy. so
00:41:55
Speaker
i think it's I think that's got to be a shift in in academia. you know and when When I did that 30 years ago, the internships always came at the end. but kind of and You're seeing the shift now where where students are having, like you just said, multiple internships, multiple exposure points um throughout the education. I think that's just so much more powerful to be able to apply what they're learning.
00:42:21
Speaker
but how many of our and I don't know how many students take how many or if they take more than one. I don't yeah i'm not and don't have my finger on that particular pulse. yeah I know they do. and I think it's a great opportunity for them to see what's really out there. Because so many people come, well, so many of the students that are in our program that are emerging adults either have family in it or heard about it to a friend or something like that. It's not something that we we see come from career fairs at high schools. I would say not everyone, but the majority of our students will come in knowing safety or come in as general so a general ah
00:43:03
Speaker
general degrees, general program and say, wow, I really like this. And and they'll stick with, they'll you know, take other things because we introduce um a real low level safety class too, you know, for freshmen. So some of them really get turned on by seeing some of the things we do and we'll go from general studies into a safety degree. But that's pretty much how we get our enrollment. Yeah. Beautiful.
00:43:26
Speaker
Um, I wanted to ask about communication, you and I had spoken about communication, but when we had our little preach our pre chat about this, and um you have thoughts on why it matters so much in EHS, and I'd like to hear your articulate your thoughts on that. Well, you know, 99% of what we do is communicate, <unk> written or verbal.
00:43:50
Speaker
But we're with we're with people. We're a people group but for the most part. We deal with people on a regular basis. And the way we speak infers what we're thinking. And i've I actually have a unit that we deal with that in communication when we do a little bit about it. I don't want to say behavior-based safety. I don't want to open that. But when we do site visits, we i teach I teach, okay, so you come upon a site and someone's not wearing their hard hat for the umpteenth time, how do you handle it?
00:44:27
Speaker
And of course, everyone's reaction is, I just tell them to put it on. And then my reaction is, well, but this is the sixth time. Well, so we'll write them up. so yeah okay Safety commentality. I said, OK, let's react to safety. I said, now let's talk about proactive safety. How do you talk to this person?
00:44:49
Speaker
And it gets dull. Everybody gives me this blank stare. He said, do you want them to feel good about themselves or not feel good about themselves? Yeah. Oh, yeah, feel good about themselves. So how do you talk to that person and make them feel good about themselves and get them to do what you want them to do by putting their heart out on it? Yeah. And they will stare at me.
00:45:11
Speaker
And so I explain it and I talk to them and say, oh, hey, does that hard hat fit here? I give them the old, hey, the safety perusal. And then we go actually do one. We actually go out and I give them a scenario and they're going to go out and I make them look at what's doing, what's positive first, and then address what they found is wasn't positive and correct the work group.
00:45:33
Speaker
So the one person will go out and they'll have their little check sheet and they'll be looking at their they're they're workers. And at this point we're doing a box lift or something in class and they'll go up. And the first thing out of someone's mouth is, oh, I see you're doing that wrong. You're going to hurt yourself. Let me show you how to do that right. yeah And this is one of my, you know, and and i so I stop them. I say, how did that make you feel?
00:45:56
Speaker
And then the students express it. And this poor this poor student who was doing the checking said, I thought I was being polite. And I said, yeah, you were being polite, but you weren't making them feel good about what they needed to be doing and all of this other stuff. And she says, I never thought about that. And all of a sudden, that's that aha moment that every faculty member wants in a classroom is where that point of making the person you're dealing with the center of your focus and not the hard hat becomes the essence of what we do as safety professionals and the way we communicate effectively to people. Jan, you're making me want to come and do my education again and just learn from you. No. I mean, it sounds like such an, well, no, I'm i'm not, yeah I'm saying that you're you're doing an excellent, excellent service to our profession in what you just described. It's
00:46:52
Speaker
But any safety but yeah any safety professional that has been out there for a while knows what works. Exactly. yeah What my task is and what makes me stay up at night, and I do, I stay awake at night trying to figure out how I can get as realistic information to these folks so that something will stick in their head. Because I always say, I don't care if you get an A, I don't care if you're like me, I want to be that thing on your shoulder when you're out in the field and you hear me screaming in your left ear, I want to be that person on your shoulder. And I want you to say, oh, I remember Hanwork said this, oh, now I know what she meant.
00:47:36
Speaker
And the delight I get in from a student that says, you know, Dr. Hanwork, I was doing a lockout, takeout, and what you said just stuck right out all of a sudden and I knew what to do. yeah And that's the kind of thing that I like to see, you know, whether or not they get A's in my class with that letter after does they graduate three years ago and say, everything you said was true.
00:47:59
Speaker
That's the piece that I think I enjoy. Yeah. I mean, as you're talking, I'm thinking of the things that my professors in grad school said to me that do stick in my mind. Like I can hear the sentences. Yeah. um All these years, all these years later. Yeah. Beautiful. Beautiful. Hmm. I wanted to- Wait, wait. I want to ask a question to you. Is that allowed? All right. Of course.
00:48:26
Speaker
you You shared with me on this communication piece, what we were discussing this last week. yeah You shared with me a story that I've kept and I jotted down oh about how you were first learning to communicate at OSHA and relying on how your parents or your background brought you.
00:48:47
Speaker
to learn how to talk to people. Would you share a little bit of that? I think it's really, really important because in my mind, i so I said to a friend of mine after this, I said, this person was a born safety person. This person should be in safety is what I said.
00:49:03
Speaker
Oh, thank you. Thank you. Well, the story that I told was that as a little kid, um my dad worked at a printing factory and he worked on the printing presses. And so if you can imagine those giant, giant rolls of paper being put on one end of a press and the press is basically a series of um drums that are rolling and rolling and rolling and everything's going really fast with ink being on these on these on these drums but that's not not what they're called in that industry. um And then the paper goes through and you know things get printed on the page and there are seven people that at that time probably not that many people anymore that would run an individual press. And my grade school was next door to the printing factory.
00:49:59
Speaker
And my dad worked a swing shift. And so on the at the times he would get off at three o'clock, which is the same time my school let out, I would walk out of my parochial school across the street into the press room, onto the factory floor, because there wasn't anyone.
00:50:18
Speaker
who was not saying kids shouldn't go into the factory floor in the 70s. And sometimes I'd sell my Girl Scout cookies um to the pressman because they were all men and that's what their job title was, was pressman. And I would wait for my dad's shift clear. And so I was observing all of these pressman and my dad, who was um the lead,
00:50:44
Speaker
he would tell me about what everybody's jobs were and who was on his crew at the time. you know I knew everybody's names and I know that this one was the role tender and this one was the packer and this one was the pressman and this one was the second. And I also knew what their injuries were because he would tell me that too, because you know the this you team of seven essentially became kind of a family. you know It's rows and rows of presses in this factory floor, but each press and each seven individuals became kind of their own little family unit. And so i I knew their jobs. I understood what their jobs were. I knew when they got hurt. I knew what happened to them. I knew how long they were out of work. And um when I got into the profession,
00:51:31
Speaker
the EHS profession, and especially as a kid in like I was an emerging adult when I had a badge and working for OSHA. And so I would go into these workplaces, you know, show my badge state my probable cause, people would get nervous, angry, you know, name whatever emotion.
00:51:53
Speaker
And then I needed to conduct my work and look for hazards and have conversations with with employees and interview employees. And i every time something would come out of my mouth, particularly when I was doing employee interviews, which is a mandatory part of the job with OSHA, I would just teleport myself back into that factory where my dad was. And I would think about what I'm going to ask needs to be framed in a way that my dad or those guys working on the press wouldn't respond with cocky college punk. ah ha What do they think? Absolutely. like How would they know my job? How would they understand my job? And so I tried to always frame things in that perspective, in that lens, that would have elicited an actual positive response
00:52:48
Speaker
or some kind of gained information based on thinking about how my dad would talk about what people understood or didn't understand about his job. Right, and that's at the core of this, and and you and I are both very fortunate in having blue collar backgrounds. and this becomes This becomes that piece on how do we how do we teach that to ... How do powder today's ... How do you teach that to your emergent adult? Exactly. and and does How does that happen? I know. that's that's at the core of
00:53:23
Speaker
of how we look at this as a proactive, because again, like I said, safety is in a great space right now. We're at that proactive stage. and um I mean, we're still at a reactive stage, but but we've evolved from reactive, and I think that's what these degrees are doing and these professional certifications are doing.
00:53:43
Speaker
It's making us more proactive in our approach because now we're also learning about knowledge backgrounds of of how to how to and how to avoid things with JSAs and lockout, takeout programs and and and safety management systems and all of these things that we teach you know where safety has evolved.
00:54:03
Speaker
from that reactive, we have we had somebody killed, let's write a policy to where let's put this in place to avoid an injury. and I think that's that's where we are in 2024. 21st century safety is is looking hard at a proactive approach to eliminating carnage in a workplace. you know Yeah, that's right. Whereas so many of the the rules and laws that we have are written in blood, as many of us have said.
00:54:30
Speaker
right forever forever and I've written one myself for the same reason. So when someone gets through their degree and their they're they're launching or launched into their profession, and we're engaging with our professional organizations, Jan, will you talk about the the advantages that you see with um the National Safety Council, the American Society of Safety Professional? So you're gonna get me in trouble with both organizations. No, I'm not. i No. oh you
00:55:01
Speaker
you have you have her indian but You have an opinion on and on what sort of um what they serve and who they serve. so but Let me preempt all of this. they Everyone in my courses, and I know the other profs too, but I have them early on in their careers. so you know i get I get to do the headbeating. Everyone in my courses must be National Safety Council student members, and I do this because it's a free. it's free
00:55:33
Speaker
yeah okay okay so um we we have students you don't want scholarship that are needing i mean i'm not going to go down that path yeah but that's free so that's that's a mandatory i didn't know that right away i didn't know that i didn't know the nsc had free student membership oh yeah it's great it's great stuff it's great stuff and he has scholarships and one of my kids just won one and he's going down to pick it up next week anyway that's his list okay all right so the nsc always so they always get in there and i use the webinars for training and I let them do a webinar for midterm and all kinds of weird things with NSC materials. I get them into the habit of understanding what's there. I teach transportation. Of course, NSC has a great national highway traffic stuff. you know so ah I use NSC. I also use ASP.
00:56:18
Speaker
ASP is, and or we had a student or we have a student chapter of ASP, and they're great. they they They're fantastic. ah They help sponsor so much of what we do, including what we have out here is the Safety Olympics. The ASP sometimes as a for is not affordable, and we try to help with students that can't afford. It's not expensive. I think it's like $15. So they become ah people of ASP too. So most of our students carry both.
00:56:47
Speaker
both memberships. my in my In my world, I look at NSC as being an advocacy to influence not only workplace safety, but home safety too. And and they they are they are in a public policy to look at ways to reduce preventable injuries and deaths. They work with, and I just said, national highway transportation safety, especially with the with the vehicular yeah injuries and accidents. i They have many campaigns. I love yeah and National Safety Council because they have lots of campaigns, any annual campaigns, monthly monthly meetings, you know monthly topics. ASSP is a fantastic advocacy for helping the professionals and workplace standards. Having their history in an engineering group
00:57:38
Speaker
They're fantastic about how they're working with ANSI and looking at some of the regulatory things to help refine some of the standards out there. I think in comparison, ASSP, National Safety Council, is more at public safety at large and workplace safety at large, where ASSP looks more at looking at the regulations and standards and the advancement of the safety professional.
00:58:05
Speaker
And NSC, you know they do the first aid CPR, but ASSP, of course, comes in with the GSP, the ASP, the CSP, which is the gold standard for us. So we look at ASSP for professional growth, for resources. ah They give us technical knowledge. They they help with leadership development.
00:58:24
Speaker
Does that make sense? It makes total sense. They're both vital. They are both pillars in the industry. They are both pillars and they they kind of have similar roles, but they really do have distinct roles, but they complement each other. Yeah. Yeah. i love how I love how you articulated that. It's just perfect. And I know we're, we're, you know, butting up on our time today, but you just dropped a little something a second ago saying safety Olympics. And now I'm like, what the heck is that about Jan?
00:58:52
Speaker
Gosh. All right. What are you doing? Okay. What are we doing? years ago A few years ago, many years ago, maybe 10 years ago, ah a group of of faculty that have safety programs in the midair Midwest area here got together and said, let's get together and share.
00:59:08
Speaker
because there was no guidelines for us. This is like, you know, safety 101 from the senior parents. So we were having developing safety programs. So we got together and we would get together as faculty and say, okay, what do we do? And once a month we'd share and somebody would take it over and we'd have pizza and we'd go to all different campuses. Somebody had the wild idea to have the students participate and just to get together to see how our programs were. And they deemed it the safety Olympics.
00:59:35
Speaker
and so seventy years ago So several years ago, universities in our area, Warrensburg, OSU, us Southeastern, a few of the colleges that offer safety programs got together, and we just laid out the faculty of all these groups, laid out challenges. And we had, I think, six or eight challenge spaces, you know accident investigation, proactive safety, training, you know all of those things that the ASSP were looking at us to teach at that point.
01:00:04
Speaker
and We wanted to see how we were doing. We got together on a weekend that we did a safety Olympics, and it's all of a sudden become a real peace now. and I think it's up to seven seven universities, but the peace to understand is ASSP supports that, and that's a really big deal.
01:00:21
Speaker
assp in the local chapters support that Olympics as well as the colleges that send them. And I'll let you know that UCO won the first two Olympics and then we had to sit out because of COVID. So we didn't get back into it yet. We lost a faculty member and one passed away. And so we had a handful of a jumble year that we didn't participate in last year. so but But we did take it for the first two years.
01:00:45
Speaker
so I'm also speaking with a safety olympics olympian coach yes olympian coach gold medal winning olympian coach yeah no just kidding not a kid the kids love it or they get to see everybody and it's right up a ssp's alley by saying yeah we do networking you know professional growth and all these kids get together and the faculty just sit there and watch tv and all these kids put all these programs together and it's just great um to see the interaction with that and the colleges and universities that that host them How many students like kind of ballpark-ish participants? Oh, geez, I don't know. I think each school got to take a team of six, I believe it was. I don't remember if it was six or eight students we all take. And there's like, you know, maybe 50 students altogether with the universities and a couple of faculty, you know, faculty and course will go along. And um it's it's just been a great.
01:01:36
Speaker
And we have a career day where we offer a bunch of people sponsors come in, ah like Smithfield, who'll sponsor us are a part of it. And they'll come in and they'll have a table and have the internships and job availabilities and information about the companies. So it also, it's career day for the kids too. Oh my gosh, that's beautiful.
01:01:56
Speaker
I love it. I love it. That's so fun. If you have any links for our show note about that, um or and your program at UCO, we'll be happy to put those in the show notes. Okay, i'll I'll get them out to you. Yeah, the safety Olympics. I'll give you the person who's taking it on. She does a fantastic job. Yeah, that's fantastic. I have never heard of safety Olympics when I was interned with the Department of Transportation a bazillion years ago.
01:02:25
Speaker
they ran something called a snowplow rodeo. Yeah. I am from Minnesota and every year the DOT always has a snowplow rodeo at the beginning of the year to teach the skills, test the skills, remind the drivers of their of their safety skills as they're as they're heading out into the winter. Yes. And then the light the you the electrical workers have the Well, they call it the lineman's rodeo. They used to call it to where they they compete nationally. Line crews would compete nationally. So yeah, they may have that among workforce. So we have it among college members now. It's beautiful. It's beautiful. What a great idea. What a great idea. Jan, before we close our time out today, any any closing thoughts that you'd like to share with the with the audience and the profession?
01:03:20
Speaker
I would like to see more women get into it. um i Currently, we're running at around 6% of enrollment would be or women, and um I would like to see more women get involved, especially since we're coming into a proactive stage in the profession. I think i think women bring an aspect to safety that is beneficial.
01:03:47
Speaker
Yeah, inter it it absolutely. And how do we do that? you know I don't know. I don't know. If I get that one, then not then I can retire and get a grant. But you know the the profession doesn't need us. you know i'm not i'm not I don't chew, nor do I spit. But you know that and they don't need all of the women from the field coming in to be professionals.
01:04:07
Speaker
I want to know how to get people interested in safety, period. Not not only the women. and I'd like to see more women, but I certainly would like to see a greater influx of, of you know, i one of my cohorts, one of my ah professors that I teach with says we need to put it on TV. We have a CSI program here at the university that since the TV shows come in, our enrollments have increased. My bigger question, and I hope any of your listeners are out there, is how do we touch base with these emerging adults to get them into the program? Yeah, that's right. Yeah. What can the call to action be for those of us who are already in it? Right. The jobs are there. The jobs are there.
01:04:50
Speaker
ah to be tapping people. And certainly we've got to work on our own legacy and backfilling for ourselves. For those of us who've been in it a while. Yeah. Yeah. Jen, thank you. Thank you. You're welcome. This has been so much fun. Yes. and And informative. And I have a feeling that our listening audience are going to be searching you out.
01:05:12
Speaker
So pay attention dear attention to your LinkedIn account. I have a feeling a few people will be looking for you. Thank you for having me. yeah This has been delightful. Yeah, same. And thank you all for spending your time listening today. And more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good.
01:05:30
Speaker
May our employees and those we influence know that our profession cares deeply about human well-being, which is the core of our practice. If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe and iTunes the Apple Podcast app or any other podcast player you'd like. Or if you prefer, you can read the transcript and listen at hsi dot.com.
01:05:49
Speaker
We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review us on iTunes. It really helps us connect the show with more and more safety professionals like Jan and I. Special thanks to Emily Gould, our podcast producer. And until next time, thanks for listening.