Chemical safety teams: An approach for teaching laboratory safety

CHED 98

Joseph M. Langenhan, langenha@seattleu.edu, Peter J. Alaimo, alaimop@seattleu.edu, and Martha Tanner. Department of Chemistry, Seattle University, 901 12th Ave., Seattle, WA 98122
Learning to recognize, demonstrate, and assess safe laboratory practices is an important objective in undergraduate laboratory courses. While laboratory safety rules provide an excellent foundation for safe behavior in the laboratory, rules do not provide students with practical experience. To address laboratory safety in organic laboratory courses, we developed a teaching approach centered around student "safety teams." After an introductory laboratory session focusing on safety, teams of students are assigned one experiment per quarter where they i) deliver a pre-lab safety presentation, ii) monitor the lab for poor laboratory practices, and iii) perform a post-laboratory period inspection. This presentation will detail our efforts and describe our assessment of the effectiveness of the safety team approach.
 

General Posters
7:30 PM-9:30 PM, Sunday, August 19, 2007 BCEC -- Exhibit Hall - B2, Poster

Division of Chemical Education

The 234th ACS National Meeting, Boston, MA, August 19-23, 2007