Process Safety Management Course Development

A pilot process safety management course (CHE 49700 – Process Safety Management) was developed in collaboration with industrial consultants as a 3-credit hour elective in the School of Chemical Engineering. The course was enhanced and expanded so that applicability was extended beyond chemical engineering to other engineering disciplines, i.e., chemical, civil, electrical, industrial, materials, mechanical and nuclear engineering. The instructors for the course are also working with the faculty in the School of Chemical Engineering to develop a “Dynamic or Living” Process Safety Library. The electronic library is being populated with safety lecture material, homework and exam problems and multi-media resources that can be incorporated in core chemical engineering courses such as thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, heat and mass transfer, reaction engineering and design. The Dynamic Process Safety Library will also be used as resource materials for students taking the Process Safety Management Course. Additionally, the process safety efforts in the College of Engineering are utilizing the existing resources and materials that are provided by the professional societies of the various engineering disciplines. The chemical engineering safety library will be accessible to the College of Engineering (COE) and beyond S2012, with input and support from other disciplines, is envisioned to become a college-wide resource. This presentation will focus on the philosophy behind the development of the course; the essential elements of the course, the benefit of the collaboration between guest lecturers from the process industries, oil and gas, academia, NGOs and government regulatory authorities in the development of the course; and the results from the assessment of student learning outcomes.