NOTE: This document is provided for historical purposes only.
Presentation by Leslie Nichols, Great Lakes Center for Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health
MS. GIBSON: Our next speaker is Leslie Nichols, who is the Program Director for Continuing Education for the Great Lakes Center for Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health at the University of Illinois at Chicago School of Public Health.
Ms. Nichols has almost 20 years of experience in occupational safety and health. Her background includes enforcement at the Illinois Department of Labor, program implementation with the City of Chicago Health Department, and 10 years in training with the University of Illinois.
Leslie Nichols.
MS. NICHOLS: Thank you, and welcome to Chicago. When they asked me to speak today, they said that they were going to be at the Sheraton Hotel on the river. I said, "It's perfect. It's a great location, it's beautiful, it's on the lake front, it's on the river." I said, "But why is it in January? Why isn't it in June?
I am here to talk about ergonomic resources available through the ERC. How many of you are familiar with ERC?
One. I will go into some detail about what those are.
As the introduction indicated, I am with the Great Lakes Center for Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health. We are the regional ERC for Illinois, Southern Wisconsin, Missouri, and Northern Indiana.
I am going to talk about what an ERC is, and about what you should take away from this talk. At the very end, I will go through a demonstration of how to access ERCs on the internet. I think that will be the most valuable resource you can take away. Since some of you are from Chicago but others are from other parts of the country, in either case, you are represented by an ERC and I will help you find where those are.
I am with the University of Illinois at Chicago. We are also known as the Illinois Educational Research Center. We are also known as the Illinois ERC, and we are also known as the Great Lakes Center for Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health. ERCs are recognized under a variety of names. Your area might be called the University of California at Berkeley ERC or it might be called the Northern California ERC. Just so you are aware that the name of your ERC could be something different depending on the catalog or the internet or the program that you are looking at.
ERCs were created out of the OSHA Act in 1970 with the creation of OSHA and NIOSH. The Act gave direction to NIOSH to develop a pool of professionals that have both technical skills as well as research skills. ERCs were developed, and their mission is to provide training, for professionals and technicals, as well as research areas.
ERCs and NIOSH are highly successful in fulfilling this mandate. They train professionals in the field of industrial hygiene and safety, as well as medicine and nursing specialties relevant to occupational settings. ERCs have successfully developed academic programs and provided graduate students setting in which to conduct research and gain technical experiences.
Components of an ERC are training for technical and research, conducting research and providing services. The final component, and I think that this was mentioned as well by George, is the interdisciplinary nature of the program. It is a program that includes medicine, nursing, industrial hygiene and safety in addressing the problems in ergonomics. ERCs provide an interdisciplinary approach to addressing problems.
There are 14 ERCs in the country. They are housed at 27 to 30 universities. They represent all of the 10 Departments of The Health and Human Services Regions. That means there is an ERC that represents your region.
Where are they located? ERCs are mostly on either coast. So how do they deal with the middle? The 14 ERCs are represented by the stars on the map. You can see Illinois, here on Lake Michigan. In the handouts that I have given you, you have a packet of these overheads, and it shows the universities. The Great Lakes Center provides service to Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin and Indiana.
Specific ergonomic activities. Again, the definition of an ERC is to provide academic training. Some of the ERCs have developed specialty course work in ergonomics. They have MS programs and Ph.D. programs. Three universities that have academic programs in ergonomics include the University of Cincinnati, University of Michigan, and Northern California ERC.
The occupational safety and ergonomics program at Cincinnati is an interdisciplinary program offered in the Department of Environmental Health and Mechanical, Industrial and Nuclear Engineering. It is an interdisciplinary approach to dealing with the problem. The curriculum is designed to provide a dual emphasis on health and engineering aspects of ergonomics and safety, and the program prepares students to meet the current and future ergonomic concerns of the workplace. The University of Cincinnati also offers a certificate program in ergonomics.
If you are looking for people to come to your company or to assist you, there are people now that have masters and Ph.D.s that are trained in ergonomics specifically.
Michigan's program is probably the oldest program. It has an MS and a Ph.D. program offered in industrial operations and engineering program. This program provides academic degree training.
In addition to the academic research and service components of the ERC, all ERCs also must provide continuing education. Continuing education is usually in the form of short courses, one- to five- to ten-day courses that are offered intensively.
Please refer to the green course catalogs. Those catalogs list all 14 ERCs and a complete course listing of all the courses that that particular ERC offers as a short course. The catalog provides information on how to contact a particular ERC to get more information. In the back of the catalog you will find a directory. The index includes ergonomics, cumulative trauma, back injury, as well as several other topics to direct you to the ERC that provides training.
Almost all of the ERCs provide at least one short course in ergonomics. One example is a five day industrial ergonomics and human factors in occupational health and safety course provided by Harvard. Minnesota provides a five day cumulative trauma disorders course. There is an advanced industrial ergonomics course provided by us at the University of Illinois. This is a two-day course. The UIC also has a two-day course in nursing and ergonomics in health care. The University has offered a special one-day six-hour course on ergonomics in patient lifting. Finally, the University of Cincinnati offers a two day practical ergonomics risk assessment course. As you can see there are a wide range of topics in continuing education offered over one-day to five-day courses.
I refer you to the catalog in which you can use to identify programs. I think if you look in the catalog, you will be able to find the courses and some descriptions for the courses you might be most interested in.
We have touched on the training and the research and the service components of ERC. How do you find what you need to know about an ERC? You can go to the worldwide web and the NIOSH home page. You may have bookmarked this on your computer.
How many people here have computers and internet access? Everyone. This is a wonderful way to find out what the ERCs have to offer and what is new in ergonomics. You can go to the NIOSH home page, I have provided you with the address. I recommend that you reference this when you are looking for the ERCs, because the page is not necessarily easy to find. ERCs are listed under extramural programs. Once at extramural programs, click on training. You can reach the ERCs, the educational resource centers. There you can get information on academic programs as well as the continuing education programs.
Finally, I have given you the Great Lakes Center for Occupational and Environmental Safety and Health home page address. You can call up our home page and see the courses and the opportunities we have as well as providing a link to NIOSH.
I think that is it, unless there are any questions which will be saved to the end. Thank you.
MS. GIBSON: Thank you, Leslie.
