TA Training – Volunteers Needed

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

December LSO Meeting: 12/4/18

Our next meeting will be held on Tuesday, December 4th, at 11:00 A.M. in 217 NOYES LAB.
 
This meeting is mandatory. If you cannot attend, please send someone from your group in your place. In the event of unavoidable circumstances, please let us know ahead of time.
This meeting is our yearly “How To Be a Lab Safety Officer” meeting. We will cover general responsibilities/expectations of LSOs, common questions, and JST/DRS suggestions. If your group will be transitioning to a new LSO in the next year and you know who it will be, please bring them and fill out the change of LSO form so that we can update our contact list.
As usual we will also review recent incidents from our incident/near miss reporting formPlease encourage anyone in your groups to submit any incidents/near misses using this anonymous form!
Finally, we will have PIZZADRINKS, and DRAWINGS for new JST Merchandise at this meeting!

JST Update!

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.

 

Safety Announcement: CLSL-A Power Outage 9/25/18

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.

Welcome to our new JST Board!

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!

Welcome!

Welcome to the new home of the Department of Chemistry Joint Safety Team! 

Please bear with us as we move content over from the Wiki page. Don’t worry, the Wiki page will continue to be maintained as an LSO resource.