Degrees in Occupational & Environmental Hygiene

The Department of Work Environment offers a master’s and a doctoral degree in Occupational & Environmental Hygiene. Credit requirements for all Master of Science Programs is now 36 credits (down from 45). The department also offers a related graduate certificate in Radiological Health Physics and General Work Environment Protection.

Occupational and Environmental Hygiene is concerned with the protection of worker health through the prevention of occupational illness and injury. Industrial hygienists accomplish this goal through the recognition, evaluation, control and prevention of chemical, physical, biological, and psychosocial hazards in the work environment. The control of such hazards allows the worker to perform his/her job in a productive manner, free from the debilitating effects of work-related illnesses.

Educational Goals

Graduates will be prepared in the initial diagnosis of exposure problems in the workplace and general environment, in the development of sampling and evaluation strategies to characterize the problem, in field collection and laboratory techniques to measure environmental exposures, and in the development and evaluation of environmental controls and innovative alternatives. A new aspect of our program is to train industrial hygienists to be involved in the design and implementation of more sustainable systems of production.

The Occupational and Environmental Hygiene program is specifically designed to achieve the following educational objectives:

• Technical Competence: Demonstrate a high level of technical and scientific competence in the application of the fundamentals of recognition, evaluation, control and prevention of occupational and environmental hazards
• Analytic Competence: Demonstrate the ability to solve complex problems through observation, literature review, measurement and data analysis
• Effective Communication: Utilize effective oral and written communications to interact with technical and lay audiences around occupational and environmental health issues
• Effective Teamwork: Work independently and as part of an occupational and environmental health team to address complex problems in occupational and environmental health
• Ethical Practice:  Understand the moral, ethical, legal and professional responsibilities for the protection of occupational and environmental health and integrate an awareness of social and global issues into practice
• Life long Learning: Understand the need to engage in life-long learning and undertake appropriate activities to address this need, including professional advancement leading to professional certification

Degrees

Master's Degree in Occupational & Environmental Hygiene

New Curriculum Changes:

Five new courses are being offered for the Occupational and Environmental Hygiene/IH concentration. These five courses will replace six former courses. Please see your advisor for further details.

• 19.614 -- Evaluation of Work Environment Hazards
• 19.615 -- Solutions for Work Environment Hazards
• 19.616 -- Indoor Air and the Built Environment
• 19.618 -- Risk Management and Training
• 19.619 -- Measurements  of Chemical Exposures

Course descriptions can be found in the Online Academic Catalog.

All Occupational & Environmental Hygiene students must take the Work Environment Core (15 credits) plus 18 credits of Occupational & Environmental Hygiene concentration courses. The curriculum allows the student to choose 3 credits in electives.

Doctoral Degree in Occupational & Environmental Hygiene
Likely areas of research include exposure assessment, biomarkers, exposure hazards in nanotechnology, indoor air and healthy buildings, sampling and analytical methods for airborne contaminants, aerosol science, noise control, toxic use reduction, integration of sustainable production and occupational hygiene. Required courses include at least one of the seminars in the series 19.611-613, 19.620. A student will normally take two or more of these, depending upon the selected area of research.

Faculty

Dhimiter Bello, Michael Ellenbecker, James McDevitt, Rafael Moure-Eraso, Margaret Quinn, Cora Roelofs, Susan Woskie