Safety Committee Vision Statement: Education that embeds accurate chemical safety instruction at all educational levels.
Safety Committee Mission Statement: To provide resources and strategies to chemical and science educators in order to prepare chemists and others to function safely while using chemicals.
The committee meets for approximately 90 minutes in conjunction with each national ACS meeting. Our spring meeting was a mixed mode meeting with a few members in person and others using Zoom on Sunday, March 26th, 2023.
At the meeting, we reviewed some informational items such as the ACS DivCHED Meeting Conduct Policy and the upcoming need for new committee members. Committee members updated the group on various ACS Safety initiatives: the new college safety videos to be released in April; chemical management course for high school teachers that is in-progress; the new CPT guidelines, and several other initiatives.
We discussed what session(s) might be appropriate for the spring 2023 meeting in Indianapolis -- perhaps something joint with the younger chemists group in CHED about careers in safety.
The projects for the survey and for re-organizing the CHED demonstrations document to use RAMP are still in process.
As the meeting wrapped up members were reminded to review the webpage and consider possible social media updates.
Following the spring meeting, the Chair was contacted by Marta Gmurczyk, ACS Senior Safety Programs Manager, regarding a new initiative to bring together members of the various ACS Safety Divisions, Committees, and Offices to discuss and determine how we may be able to work together to improve our effectiveness and efforts in chemical safety and sustainability. Through interviews and surveys in June and early July, the ACS Safety Office put together an in person meeting for about 20 individuals involved in ACS safety programs across the society. This was a very informative and productive meeting which will raise the role of safety programming in the society in the future.
The DivCHED Safety Committee thanks everyone who responded to last year’s survey. We are reviewing responses to the survey to better understand the needs and safety issues among division members. We are also working on a revision of the CHED demonstrations guide using RAMP guidelines. A revision of the committee webpage is also planned to reorganize access to resources and create a user-friendly interface for the division membership.
The committee is also working to expand our committee to provide representation from AACT, 2YC3, Early Career Chemistry Education Scholars and others to expand our efforts to reach out to division membership to enhance safety programs and materials.
Of great value to the committee are the cross-connections that several of our committee members have to the Committee on Chemical Safety (CCS) and to Division of Chemical Health And Safety (DivCHAS). We are also indebted to Marta Gmurczyk who helps make connections with and provide information about various ACS safety-focused projects.