Recommendations

Institution-wide dynamics and resources

President/Chancellor

1. Renews commitment to improve the culture of safety for all academic research, scholarship, and teaching.
2. Designates a campus lead and leadership team to begin the process. The president/chancellor considers appropriate committees to help implement a culture of safety, including a safety committee of faculty, Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) officers, and other representatives who can provide formative feedback to researchers, educators, and staff.

Campus lead and leadership team

3. Conduct campus dialogues with stakeholders to develop a shared vision of safety that aligns with the institutional mission and to develop an action plan.
4. Develop effective safety policies, procedures, and management systems, and identify the resources necessary for implementation. They establish recognition and reward systems and integrate these into tenure and promotion, hiring, and annual performance reviews.
5. Clearly articulate the roles and responsibilities of all stakeholders.
6. With the faculty, embed safety communication in laboratories, classes, departments and throughout the wider campus.
7. With the faculty, work to create a trusting and safe culture. They encourage the development of a generative cultures based on open dialogue, reporting, and learning from near misses, as described by the National Academy of Sciences.

Institution

8. Develops a risk assessment process for laboratory safety that is integral to all activities conducted in the laboratory or the field.
9. Establishes a unified administrative reporting model that connects responsibility for development and implementation of academic safety policies. The model should fall under one administrative pillar in the institution and should include faculty, EH&S officers, and administrative leaders.
10. Empowers undergraduate students, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and staff to voice safety questions and concerns to their faculty supervisors, EH&S offices, and/or safety committee.
11. Works to strengthen collegial and collaborative relationships between faculty and EH&S staff.
12. Works to enhance effective working relationships with first responders.