We will be holding a Standard Operating Procedure workshop with the help of DRS.

When: Thursday, January 31st

Where: Noyes 165

The goal of this workshop is to provide students with the necessary knowledge and resources to efficiently create quality SOPs, it will consist of two parts.

The first part will be a presentation/discussion on SOP basics, their requirements, and risk assessments. This part will go from 1:00 pm to approximately 2:00 pm. 

The second part will be an opportunity for students to create a SOP or update an existing SOP with the help of DRS and JST (Students may come for just the 1^st part). If you do plan on participating in the second part and creating/updating a SOP, please bring your laptop or the printed SOP. This part will start around 2:00 pm and go until 3:00 pm.

Please email chem-safetyteamchair@mx.uillinois.edu with any questions.

The Joint Safety Team (JST) wants your help!

During this training, graduate student volunteers will “role-play” as students that do not follow standard lab rules (shorts in the lab, no safety goggles, etc.). The TA’s will have to identify the problem and intervene in the appropriate way. Afterwards, the graduate student volunteers will give feedback to the trainees.

We hope that this training session helps the lab TA’s feel more comfortable in a position of authority. This will improve communication between TA and student and help to mitigate potential incidents throughout the semester. Plus, it should be fun for graduate students to be the “bad students”, so please sign-up!

Wednesday, January, 16th 5:30-7:00 PM, 1006/1007 Chem Annex

Pizza and pop will be available for all volunteers, plus we will be raffling prizes!

Signup here: https://goo.gl/forms/a9VN3ncwiGjxsQ3G2

Please see the social media tab and follow us on facebook to stay up to date with the safety happenings within our department! Thank you to all who attended our October 23rd LSO meeting. The slides are now available on the website. Be on the lookout for more information regarding our next LSO meeting.

There will be a scheduled CLSL-A power outage from 5:00 – 8:00 am on Tuesday, September 25. Please see the following notes from F & S regarding the outage.

During this outage:

-There will be absolutely no power in the building
-There will be no air supply or ventilation, which also applies to fume hoods
-For safety reasons, occupants of the building will not be allowed to stay in the building.  The SCS Safety Officer (Shane B.)  will routinely check each research lab to ensure occupants are not staying in the building.
-School of Chemical Sciences (SCS) and F&S will have staff on hand during the outage to monitor the electrical outage and building equipment.
-SCS staff will provide email updates to all occupants during the outage, and will email an “ALL CLEAR” when occupants can return to the building.

Prior to the Building Outage:

Here’s what you can do to prepare to optimally handle this power outage:

-We recommend all electronic equipment be properly shut down, turned off, and unplugged prior to the start of the outage.
-Identify all “sensitive” equipment.  Review SOPs (when available) for safe shutdown.  Contact manufacturers where appropriate for shutdown procedures.  Make sure you know where all of your equipment is plugged in, and label equipment cords and plugs if you want to keep track of what gets plugged in where.
-Secure hazardous operations, and cap chemicals, in fume hoods and any other environments that depend on ventilation for safety.
-Identify all sensitive samples in refrigerators, freezers, or cold rooms that need to be relocated, and contact the SCS Facility Manager (333-1972 or 369-4908) to arrange for an alternative cold room location if required.
-Familiarize yourself with the reset procedures in the manual for all freezers/refrigerators, especially modern CPU-controlled freezers, so that you will be prepared if they do not reset to the desired default temperature when powered back on after the outage.
-80 deg C freezers, unopened, are expected to maintain their temperature for 4 hours, so their shutdown during the outage is not expected to cause any sample storage issues. Nevertheless, please email information about your freezer location/s to Danielle Cruzan ( dcruzan@illinois.edu) so that SCS and F&S can ensure that the freezer is fully operational when power is restored.
-Designate two group representatives to interface with SCS staff and top up dry ice during the outage; email their names, email addresses, and cell phone numbers to Danielle Cruzan ( dcruzan@illinois.edu).
-You may send a complete email list for your group to dcruzan@illinois.edu  – Danielle Cruzan so we can be sure everyone is notified of progress during the outage.

We are excited to welcome our new JST Graduate Student Board!

• Jacob Turner will be staying on as Vice Chair
• Shannon Murphy is our new Secretary
• Morgan Cencer is our new Treasurer
• Clare Leahy and Maria Philip are our new Working Group Coordinators
• Jose Zavala will be continuing as our Wellness coordinator

Thank you to our outgoing board members Marina and Michael for all your hard work!