The DivCHED Safety Committee welcomes anyone at any experience level with an interest in safety education. Our vision is of education that embeds accurate chemical safety instruction at all educational levels, and our mission is to provide resources and strategies to chemical and science educators in order to prepare chemists and others to function safely while using chemicals. We typically meet in conjunction with the Fall and Spring meetings of the ACS. If you are interested in safety education and interested in getting involved, you are welcome to attend our committee meetings, or contact the Committee chair and he will try to connect you with appropriate people and projects.
Members of the Safety Committee work on a range of projects at the intersection of safety and education. These include collaborative projects with other Offices, Divisions, and Committees of the ACS, always with a focus on bringing the education perspective to safety issues, and the safety perspective to educational issues. We are excited to continue our collaborative efforts within the ACS Office of Safety Programs and our safety partners throughout the Society.
Most recently, we had our first presentation of a new professional development workshop, Developing Instructional Safety Strategies in Undergraduate Chemistry Labs. This workshop focuses on teaching of chemical safety throughout the undergraduate chemistry curricula and establishment of a culture of safety within Chemistry Departments.
The Office of Safety Programs have published a new safety eBook at no cost to faculty or students. The text is Finster and Hills’s, 3rd edition of Laboratory Safety for Chemistry Students (https://institute.acs.org/acs-center/lab-safety/education-training/coll…) and is available at the ACS Institute website (https://institute.acs.org/acs-center/lab-safety.html).
A resource that was made available as part of this textbook is a series of worksheets for completing RAMP Analysis of your teaching labs. These forms were designed and tested to be used in the classroom with students as they learn the steps necessary for developing and performing experiments safely. Click on the Download Learning Materials link on the textbook webpage above to access the zip file with those forms.
The Safety Committee will be linking these resources to our revamped webpage later this year.
The Safety Committee welcomes safety symposia and programming at national and regional meetings about chemical safety in education. We plan on hosting safety related workshops and symposia at the 2026 BCCE. If you are interested in organizing a safety symposia for a national or regional ACS meeting, please contact Steve Wietstock (swietsto@nd.edu). If there is something you have particular need for or interest in, please reach out to the Safety Committee to share your thoughts.