A look into the lives of CSU's Current Environmental Health Interns
First Entry ---3 months later!
I have been working here at EH&S part time since April, and about 2 weeks ago I started working full time. I have learned a lot since I have been here; I work in the biosafety divison, but I have worked on multiple projects with people throughout the department to give me a good taste of what everyone does around here! The divisons of this department are basically the EH classes that we have taken; IH, Health Physics, Emergency Management, Hazardous Waste, Environmental Compliance, etc. I have definitely been able to take a lot of what I learned in the classroom and apply it to my work here.
In the biosafety divison, we work with labs on campus who work with blood borne pathogens, recombinant DNA, and other biological agents; currently this amounts to about 130 principal investigators and 550 lab personnel. My main responsibilities are to maintain our autoclave database, which consists of about 40 autoclaves throughout campus. The autoclaves are required to be maintenanced every 6 months, and a spore test has to be performed every 3 months. Every week I go out to check autoclaves that are due that particular month to make sure that everything has been done. I also have been serving as an assistant for the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC), which my boss is the coordinator of. The IBC is a group of about 12 people; mostly professors from campus, but also various community members who have some type of biological background. The IBC meets every other month and reviews about 10 new principal investigators and their biological research to determine whether they are following the biosafety guidelines for research. One of my big projects for the summer is to create a database in Filemaker Pro of all 680 people who will require online biosafety training, and to administer these trainings as well. I am also currently working with the Hazardous Waste group to completely rewrite the Generators' Guide to Hazardous Material/Waste Management book, which is given to all people who complete the hazardous waste training (about 6,000 total).
Well that is a very general overview of what I have been doing for the last few months, I will definitely post more later!
In the biosafety divison, we work with labs on campus who work with blood borne pathogens, recombinant DNA, and other biological agents; currently this amounts to about 130 principal investigators and 550 lab personnel. My main responsibilities are to maintain our autoclave database, which consists of about 40 autoclaves throughout campus. The autoclaves are required to be maintenanced every 6 months, and a spore test has to be performed every 3 months. Every week I go out to check autoclaves that are due that particular month to make sure that everything has been done. I also have been serving as an assistant for the Institutional Biosafety Committee (IBC), which my boss is the coordinator of. The IBC is a group of about 12 people; mostly professors from campus, but also various community members who have some type of biological background. The IBC meets every other month and reviews about 10 new principal investigators and their biological research to determine whether they are following the biosafety guidelines for research. One of my big projects for the summer is to create a database in Filemaker Pro of all 680 people who will require online biosafety training, and to administer these trainings as well. I am also currently working with the Hazardous Waste group to completely rewrite the Generators' Guide to Hazardous Material/Waste Management book, which is given to all people who complete the hazardous waste training (about 6,000 total).
Well that is a very general overview of what I have been doing for the last few months, I will definitely post more later!
Comment
About
Badge
© 2010 Created by Charlotte Boney on Ning. Create a Ning Network!
You need to be a member of Environmental Health Interns to add comments!
Join this Ning Network