Is there any important safety information you wished you had known when you joined a lab? Do you have any suggestions about how to improve the current safety exam?

JST is looking for graduate student volunteers to participate in a working group on updating the SCS Safety Exam. Volunteers will be asked to provide comments and suggestions on making the safety exam more applicable and relevant for our department. If you’ve ever had any thoughts on important safety information you had wished you had known when you came here and joined your lab, now is the time to contribute!

Please fill out the form here if you are interested!

The JST needs your help!

It’s time for fall TA training. In our efforts to improve the safety culture in the Chemistry Department we are assisting with training the incoming graduate students and undergrad Lab TA’s for the upcoming semester.

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, August 28th, 5:30-7:30 PM, 1006/1007 Chem Annex

Tuesday, September 3rd, 5:00-6:00 PM, 1006 Chem Annex

Thursday, September 5th, 5:00-6:00 PM, 1006 Chem Annex

Pizza and pop will be available for all volunteers, plus we will be giving away JST merchandise! The training will take about 45 minutes and the rest of the time is for pizza.

Sign up here!