TRACKING OF SAFETY LEARNING IN TWO LAST YEARS OF CHEMICAL ENGINEERING DEGREE

Safety training is essential to strengthen a real culture of risk prevention which results in better work practices. In the field of Chemical Engineering, such training is even more important, because of the risks associated with handling of chemicals and with the characteristics and operation conditions of the equipment used. However, the integration of risks’ prevention in the new curricula of Chemical Engineering degree in Spain is very variable, and in many cases insufficient because there is not any specific subject area or compulsory courses related to this topic. Therefore, the formation of students on safety should be performed as a cross-cutting issue across the curriculum. With such aim, the Department of Chemical and Nuclear Engineering of the “Universitat Politècnica València” raised an educational innovation project during the academic year 2012-13 to incorporate the safety training through the set of Chemical Engineering experimental subjects. In that project different strategies were designed to teach safety in a progressive way along the three experimental subjects in 2nd and 3rd year. After the implementation of the project in two academic years, the learning of the students in safety was tracked after the experimental subjects of 2nd and 3rd year .To do that, different control points were established across the semesters, in which, some surveys about safety knowledge were carried out, and the results of safety activities undertaken by students were analyzed. This work describes the process and the tools used to track learning on safety, and shows the main results obtained from the mentioned control points.