President’s Pen – October 2017

IH Identity Crisis     IH Resources     The Leadership Challenge

IH identity crisis

I don’t know about you, but I have a little bit of an identity crisis.  How many online survey or application forms have you filled out where the JOB / OCCUPATION drop down menu has nothing even close to what we do?  Inevitably I select “other” and hope the people at the other end of the survey are curious to know more. 

When was the last time you saw a famous Industrial Hygienist on the couch of “Ellen” or on the Tonight Show?   What does your kid answer when someone asks “What does your mom and dad to for a living?”   I’m not really sure what my kids say behind my back.   I hope something like “he follows people around with a dust monitor and makes them wear respirators” comes up after the “he’s a safety guy/nerd/geek” part.   Since no one wants to be an “other” when they grow up, some awareness of the work we do is needed. 

So what is my point?  Our profession is predicting a shortage of qualified Industrial Hygienists and Safety Professionals in the near future.   To help close this gap, more people need to understand what we do, especially high school students looking for career guidance.  We, active IH professionals, need to help educate these students to help fill the pipeline with future IH professionals.

Resources

AIHA has put together two campaigns to help create awareness of our profession with the intent of drawing more students into Industrial Hygiene degree programs.   These can be found on www.aiha.org under I Am IH and IH Heroes.

These links open up a number of professionally developed presentations, videos, and graphics.  The objective is for AIHA members like you and me to use these tools to talk about what we do as Industrial Hygienists.  Obvious target audiences are high schools and career fairs.  These materials can be paired up with “Safety Matters – A Safety & Health Training Program for Young Workers”.  More on this another time.

The Leadership Challenge

A challenge was laid out at AIHce 2017 that we’re a little late at getting out to you folks in the Upper Midwest Section.   This is called the I Am IH LEADERSHIP CHALLENGE.   The challenge is for each local chapter to get as many members possible to participate in an event that promotes our profession.  The events can be any activity leveraging the I Am IH or IH Hero campaigns, or making a Safety Matters presentation.  The purpose is to promote the IH profession and plant some seeds into the minds of students.   This is being run as a contest.  The top three regions with the most events logged on twitter will be recognized at the Mark of Excellence breakfast at AIHce 2018 and featured in a 2018 Synergist article.  The deadline for the contest is Dec 31, 2017.

I know what you’re saying, there’s only 3 months left.  We need to focus and get started.  Click the Leadership Challenge link for more details.  To document completion of an event, take a selfie in front of the school or have someone take your photo in action and post the photo on twitter with the hash tag #IAMIH and #CENTRAL.  (Note:  we are considered “central region” for this contest, not Upper Midwest.)   For privacy reasons, do not included student’s faces in the photos.

Free I Am IH Kits

I Am IH kits with handouts, stickers, buttons, flyers and a USB drive with presentations are available free from AIHA by clicking the links above and registering to receive the information.   Order one today.  You can show the materials to school administrators when talking about setting up a presentation.

Get Started

Use me as the Upper Midwest Section point of contact for questions.  I can answer questions and share ideas.  I’d also like to hear your ideas.  Please keep me in the loop as you schedule and conduct presentations and attend events.   I’ll get the information and photos to our local chapter web site to keep the members updated.

I encourage all of you to take a look at the materials available from AIHA and make a commitment to do something to help educate young people about our profession. We may never know which students will choose to follow an IH career path, but the more seeds we plant, the better the future of our profession will be; and the more likely our kids won’t have to choose “other” on a credit card application.

Scott D Norman, CIH, CSP

AIHA UMS 2017 President-Elect

scott.norman@tsi.com  (651) 490-2702