Degrees in Occupational & Environmental Hygiene

The Department of Work Environment offers Master’s and Doctoral degrees in Occupational & Environmental Hygiene. The Department also offers a related graduate certificate in Radiological Health Physics and General Work Environment Protection.

Faculty: Michael Ellenbecker, Rafael Moure-Eraso, Margaret Quinn, Cora Roelofs, Abbas Virji, Susan Woskie

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: 

  1. 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
  2. Analytic Competence: Demonstrate the ability to solve complex problems through observation, literature review, measurement and data analysis.
  3. Effective Communication: Utilize effective oral and written communications to interact with technical and lay audiences around occupational and environmental health issues
  4. Effective Teamwork: Work independently and as part of an occupational and environmental health team to address complex problems in occupational and environmental health
  5. 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
  6. 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.
Master's Degree in Occupational & Environmental Hygiene

All Occupational & Environmental Hygiene students must take the Work Environment Core and 21 credits of Occupational & Environmental Hygiene concentration courses. The curriculum allows the student to choose nine 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.

Department of Work Environment - Kitson Hall, Room 200 (UML North), 1 University Avenue, Lowell, MA 01854
Phone: 978-934-3250 Fax: 978-452-5711 Contact us