Learn More - Fall Symposium 2022 - CSHEMA - EHS Leadership in Higher Education

Fall Symposium

Fall Symposium on Storytelling | October 11-12, 2022
Princeton University- Princeton, NJ

Storytelling is a part of our daily lives and part of how we survived long ago: from the family stories we pass on, the books we read, the movies we watch - the list goes on! While many may think of storytelling as a form of entertainment, it is also a transformative tool for safety culture, adult learning, sense- or meaning-making, bonding and relationship building, qualitative research and incident sharing. CSHEMA’s Fall Symposium on Storytelling will explore the science, art and power of storytelling with relation to environmental health and safety and risk management programs on campuses.

Agenda

***All times listed are in EST

Tuesday, October 11, 2022
7:00 AM – 5:00 PM	Registration / Help Desk
8:00 AM – 8:45 AM	Breakfast
8:45 AM - 9:00 AM	Welcome to the 2022 Fall Symposium Meagan Fitzpatrick – Princeton University Beth Welmaker – NOVA Southeastern University
9:00 AM – 10:00 AM	*Turning Your Story into Their Story* Kelly States – Princeton University
10:00 AM – 11:00 AM	*The Choose Your Own Adventure Approach to Safety Training* Ralph Stuart – Keene State College
11:00 AM - 3:00 PM	Exhibits Open
11:00 AM – 11:15 AM	Morning Break with Exhibitors
11:15 AM – 12:15 PM	*From Anecdote to Epic: Turning Workplace Tales into Engaging (and Instructive) Stories* Jim Sturdivant – Princeton University
12:15 PM – 1:15 PM	Lunch / Table Talks / Visit Exhibitors
1:15 PM – 1:45 PM	Petcha Kutcha Block 18 Story Ideas, Uses, Experiments, and Fun Interventions You Can Choose from in 6+ Minutes! Jonathan Klane – Arizona State University *Hazard Perception Storytelling Through the Lenses of Lab Managers and Researchers* Callan Kaut and Ryan Lisk – University of Texas Southwestern University *Future Storytelling: A Personalized Approach to Safety Culture* Anthony Appleton – Colorado State University
1:45 PM - 2:45 PM	*My Stories - Valuable Lessons Learned* Joan Hutzly – Princeton University
2:45 PM - 3:00 PM	Afternoon Break with Exhibitors
3:00 PM - 4:00 PM	*Be a More Effective Safety Consultant-Leader by Discovering Your Own Story* John DeLaHunt – University of Texas San Antonio
4:00 PM - 5:00 PM	*From Research to Impact – Storytelling Science for a Safer World* Cristi Bell-Huff – Chemical Insights Research Institute of Underwriters Laboratory Inc.
5:30 PM – 7:00 PM	Happy Hour Reception at Frick Chemistry Building Atrium - Sponsored by SafetyStratus

Wednesday, October 12, 2022
7:30 AM - 5:00 PM	Registration / Help Desk
8:00 AM - 1:00 PM	Exhibits Open
8:00 AM – 8:45 AM	Breakfast / Visit Exhibitors
8:45 AM – 9:45 AM	*Bonding Through Storytelling* Brandon Chance – Southern Methodist University
9:45 AM - 10:45 AM	*From Curation to Containment: One Journey Toward Making our Campus Art Collection Safer* Shaundree Davis – Princeton University
10:45 AM - 11:00 AM	Keynote Welcome Robin Izzo and Dr. Pablo Debenedetti – Princeton University
11:00 AM – 12:00 PM	Keynote Address Brad Snyder – Princeton University
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM	Lunch / Table Talks / Visit Exhibitors
1:00 PM – 2:00 PM	Princeton University Campus Tours
2:00 PM – 2:15 PM	Afternoon Break
2:15 PM – 3:15 PM	*How to Improve Your Storytelling Skills and Craft in 60 Minutes or Less!* Jonathan Klane – Arizona State University
3:15 PM – 4:15 PM	*Legionella: A Citywide Health Crisis that Provided Critical Lessons for the COVID-19 Response* Howard Aspen – City University of New York
4:15 PM – 5:15 PM	Using Technology to Enhance Environmental Compliance Efforts Vendor **Spotlight - CampusOptics**
5:15 PM – 5:30 PM	Conference Closing

Session Descriptions

The Choose Your Own Adventure Approach to Safety Training

Presented by Ralph Stuart, Environmental Safety Manager

An unusual story telling is to use the second person to connect with the audience. After a couple of hazmat responses that were made more difficult by the lab workers on the scene, we reimagined our lab safety training to be more interactive in a way that requires the audience to make decisions at key points in a lab spill scenario. This approach proved its value over the years in a variety of ways and has been adapted to a variety of other safety training situations. This presentation will explore the opportunities and challenges presented by this approach.

Learning Objectives:

Consider the opportunity presented by story based training techniques and what story elements are useful in safety discussions
Identify specific stories from your experience that can be used in this way.
Understand the limits of the story based approach to technical communication

About the presenter
Ralph Stuart, CIH, CCHO has been the Environmental Safety Manager at Keene State College in Keene, NH for 8 years. Previously, he served similar roles at the Univ of Vermont and Cornell University. He is a member of the 2002 class of the CSHEMA Hall of Fame.

Be a More Effective Safety Consultant-Leader by Discovering Your Own Story

Presented by John DeLaHunt, Risk & Life Safety Manager

Everyone, including you, has a story. Like it or not, each of our stories have helped us define who we are and how we do what we do. This, and the events in our lives, have shaped our current contexts. Our current contexts shape how we react to everything, and this affects everything we do to help others. If we wish to be more effective as consultants and leaders, we may want to understand these things and make deliberate choices. Discovering our stories will help us face our own shortcomings and become more effective.

Learning Objectives:

Understand the story arc model of story telling
Learn a process for mapping significant events ("backstory")
Identify "worst ways" and "sweet spots"
Learn to reframe, identify key relationships, and make overdue life changes
Learn to use story to build a better mission statement and be a more effective consultant and leader

About the presenter
John DeLaHunt has managed EHS and risk in higher education since 1989. At Colorado College, he launched a comprehensive EHS program. At The University of Texas at San Antonio, he serves as the university's Fire Marshal and Risk Manager. Mr. DeLaHunt holds a Bachelor's degree in chemistry from Colorado College, and an MBA in finance and management from University of Colorado - Colorado Springs.

Future Storytelling: A Personalized Approach to Safety Culture

Presented by Anthony Appleton, Research Safety Culture Program Coordinator

Most of the stories, if not all the stories, we learn from have occurred in the past. But what if we asked people to think about their future in order to inspire a positive safety culture? This Pecha Kucha-style presentation will focus on examples of "Future Storytelling." The attendee will be given examples to utilize at their institution, as well as engage in discussion and exchange additional examples with other attendees. This type of storytelling is applicable across the entire academic landscape.

Learning Objectives:

Inspiring others to use "Future Storytelling."
Creating an external locus of a person's safety culture.
Having examples of "Future Storytelling" to use at the attendee's institution.
Engaging in the exchange of examples by attendees of "Future Storytelling.

About the presenter
Dr. Anthony Appleton (PhD) is the Research Safety Culture Program Coordinator, a liaison-style position acting as the “ganache” between researchers and the various safety and compliance units at Colorado State University. Anthony truly believes research safety is not just the researcher, research safety is the entire community involved in research. Anthony is currently the co-lead for the Safety Culture Community of Practice within CSHEMA. He has co-authored twenty peer-reviewed articles that have appeared in such journals as Advanced Materials, Nature Communications, the Journal of the American Chemical Society, and Energy & Environmental Science. Anthony was a member of the University Committee on Health and Safety’s Task Force for Advancing the Culture of Laboratory Safety at Stanford University, which generated the influential report “Advancing Safety Culture in the University Laboratory.

Legionella: A Citywide Health Crisis that Provided Critical Lessons for the COVID-19 Response

Presented by Howard Apsan Ph.D., Senior University Director of Environmental, Health, Safety, and Risk Management for The City University of New York

Monday, August 3, 2015, was a typical Triple-H—hot, humid and hazy—summer day in the Bronx. But that didn’t stop hundreds of people from lining up around the block that evening to squeeze into the basement auditorium of the Bronx Museum and hear Dr. Mary Bassett, the New York City Health Commissioner, reassure them that the City was doing everything that it could to keep them safe. This was not a gathering of doctors or politicians, mind you, although there were certainly enough of both in the room. No, this was a crowd of neighbors in the South Bronx, the putative epicenter of what was being referred to as a legionella outbreak. They came from the projects and tenements, apartments and row houses; many spoke English as a second language; and few if any understood the concepts of toxicology and epidemiology that were being discussed. What they did know is that a number of their neighbors got sick and died from some mysterious droplets of cooling tower water that seem to be sprinkling off every rooftop.

The auditorium was packed to capacity. News crews squeezed their cameras into every vacant space; politicians finally gave up trying to work the room; and anxious residents of the South Bronx struggled to sit, stand or lean wherever they could to hear the Commissioner’s reassuring words. And that is exactly what they heard. She spoke to them with the authority of the Commissioner of the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH), but also as Mary Bassett, a physician born and raised in in the same city that she was sworn to protect. She seemed to be one with her audience and the people responded in kind. She told them what she knew and what the City planned to do. She then opened the floor to questions and proceeded to answer every one with patience and empathy—even though she inevitably had to respond to the same questions over and over—and she never looked at her watch. What she told them is that she is issuing a Health Commissioner’s Order requiring every building with water-recirculating cooling towers within the City of New York to take specific measures that protect against the spread of legionella.

Complying with the order could be complicated, time-consuming and expensive. To complicate matters, as the crisis evolved, it became clear that the Health Commissioner’s Order would be only one of many requirements and guidelines issued by a range of Federal, State and City agencies with responsibility for public health and safety. This story will focus on how the legionella crisis emerged and abated, how the various government agencies responded, and how one landlord—The City University of New York, with 25 campuses and 300 buildings—complied. It will also provide insight into how the City and CUNY applied the lessons-learned from the legionella crisis and applied them to the COVID-19 pandemic response a few years later.

Learning Objectives:

Health policy development
Health policy implementation
Practical implications of epidemiology
Health emergency response
Higher education emergency response
Higher education role in policy partnerships
Higher education as a community anchor institution
Higher education promoting equity
Technology and sampling tools in health emergency response

About the presenter
Howard Apsan, Ph.D. serves as the Senior University Director of Environmental, Health, Safety, and Risk Management for The City University of New York, the largest urban university system in the United States, and is an adjunct professor at Columbia University.

From Research to Impact – Storytelling Science for a Safer World

Presented by Cristi Bell-Huff, Research Manager and Holley Henderson, Partnerships and Project Manager

Ever wonder about the behind the scenes with researchers and scientists? What’s their story?

Great stories are always about transformation. This session will provide insight from a dynamic, women-led scientific research institute that understands the potential for research outcomes to transform campus safety culture and impact public health. The “research to impact” process follows the classic story arc.

Stories from all stages of Chemical Insights Research Institute’s “research to impact” process will be shared from their work on a wide variety of emerging technologies and topics such as 3D printing emissions, an economical approach to improving indoor air quality during wildfire smoke events within affected communities, and more.

Participants will discuss how “research to impact” is or might be used on their campuses and collaborate to create their own research to impact story they can share to transform safety culture."

Learning Objectives:

See the stories behind the science
Identify the unintended consequences of emerging technologies and the need for continued research
Describe the steps of the research to impact process
Recognize the steps required to go from research findings to behavior change

About the presenter
Dr. Cristi Bell-Huff is a Research Manager with Chemical Insights Research Institute of Underwriters Laboratories Inc. She manages and tracks strategic research initiatives and develops internal and external technical documents and summaries of findings. Dr. Bell-Huff previously served as a Lecturer and the Director of Faculty and Student Training in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. She has also been an engineering faculty member at Lawrence Technological University in Southfield, Michigan. She holds a PhD and MS in Chemical Engineering from Purdue University, an MA in Education from the University of Michigan, and a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Tennessee-Knoxville.

Holley Henderson is providing project management for Chemical Insights Research Institute of Underwriters Laboratories Inc. who contributes to the protection of human health and well-being through scientific research. Research initiatives are focused on air quality regarding 3D printing, furniture flammability, vaping and global air pollution.

Holley is known as the Common Sense Environmentalist making sustainable choices make sense for your business. Prior to founding H2 Ecodesign, Holley was with tvsdesign for ten years and launched their sustainability studio. H2 Ecodesign has led several “firsts,” including: the first LEED-CI project in the US (Platinum Level), the first LEED-CI in China (Gold Level), the first LEED project in Thailand, and most recently, a LEED-CS (Platinum Level) award for the largest energy provider in Thailand. This project is over 2 million square feet. Beyond buildings, H2 Ecodesign collaborates with a myriad of product manufacturers including carpet, ceilings, faucets, insulation and resilient flooring facilitating their green path including external and internal communication.

For over a decade, Holley served the National U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) in a variety of leadership roles including the Chair of the Market Advisory Committee, LEED-CI Core Committee, and the National USGBC LEED Steering Committee. Currently, Holley is Chair of the IFMA Environmental Stewardship Utilities & Sustainability (ESUS) Program Committee. Holley is an ASID Distinguished Speaker and author of the book Becoming a Green Building Professional.

Bonding Through Storytelling

Presented by Brandon Chance, Executive Director of Environmental Health and Safety

Building relatable and personal bonds with stakeholders and constituents is a very important aspect of developing an effective safety program. Storytelling is a natural and effective way to build these bonds. From a near-miss experienced at home to an incident investigation or work-place accident, everyone has experiences that others can relate to. Tradespersons, custodians, researchers, or any other number of campus constituents can all benefit from hearing others’ experiences. This presentation will focus on using targeted storytelling based on personal and professional experiences to engage audiences, develop relationships, and personify the roles and responsibilities of EHS professionals.

Learning Objectives:

Gain insight into using personal and professional life experiences to build relationships with their stakeholders
Learn how to identify with different groups of campus stakeholders and tailor stories for those groups
Learn to use various types of incidents ranging from capital project damages to lab accidents to create narratives that personify safety

About the presenter
Brandon Chance has spent the last 14 years in various environmental health and safety roles around the world. Initially hired as a research assistant and lab coordinator at Texas A&M University at Qatar, Brandon transitioned to a full-time safety role in 2008. He has held various positions at Texas A&M University at Qatar, Princeton University, and currently serves as the Executive Director of Environmental Health and Safety at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. In addition to his EHS duties, Brandon serves in various capacities with the American Chemical Society Division of Chemical Health and Safety and the Campus Safety Health and Environmental Management Association. Prior to a career in safety, Brandon was a bench chemist for academic and industrial partners and holds bachelor's and master's degrees in chemistry with an emphasis on polymer and organic chemistry from Texas Lutheran University and Texas A&M University.

From Anecdote to Epic: Turning Workplace Tales Into Engaging (and Instructive) Stories

Presented by Jim Sturdivant, Senior Communications Specialist

Anyone who has worked in a university EHS office knows there’s a good story for just about every department on campus, from arresting incidents to near-misses, quirky colleagues, humorous situations and everything in between. The challenge for a good communicator is to frame such tales in a way that is accurate, instructive, engaging and true to the people involved. In 2022 I embarked on my first-ever podcast, “EHS Stories”, inspired by the stories I heard from current and former colleagues as Princeton EHS marked its 50th anniversary. While I’ll leave it to others to judge the quality of the result, there is hopefully much to learn from my experience trying to spin yarns into whole cloth. Learning objectives can be broadly characterized as: 1) Creating a podcast and telling a story on this platform; 2) Storytelling skills understood more generally as trying to educate and entertain in the context of the history and culture of an institution.

Learning Objectives:

Technical aspects of planning and executing a podcast
Researching subject(s) at hand
Choosing and interviewing subjects
Editing material
Framing and contextualizing information
Making fragmented recollections into a coherent story
Characterization, fact checking, accuracy
Aligning with the mission and culture of the office and institution
Publicizing the result

About the presenter
Jim Sturdivant, is the communications specialist for Princeton EHS, where he supports the health and safety mission of the office through campus outreach and multi-platform messaging, including websites, marketing materials, social media and e-learning. He also coordinates the campus UAS program, working with individuals seeking to fly drones for research or recreational purposes.

Turning Your Story Into Their Story

Presented by Kelly States Associate Director, EHS

On November 5, 2005, safety professional Kelly States suffered a personal loss when a family member died in a multi-fatality workplace incident. After the U.S. Chemical Safety Board investigated the incident and issued a report, Kelly has employed this story to help employees understand how quickly small decisions can lead to life-altering consequences.By helping employees imagine themselves in similar circumstances and think about how they'd respond (before knowing the real-life outcome), storytelling can be a powerful tool that results in staff who are unafraid to pause and seek safe alternatives, even in high-pressure situations.This talk will also discuss how to avoid "gatekeeping" your stories so that others may use them to prevent tragedies in the future.

Learning Objectives:

The power of personal stories in health and safety training
Methods to turn personal stories into self-motivation for employees to seek out safe work practices
Strategies to empower others to use your story to effect change

About the presenter
Kelly States is the Associate Director of Campus Safety and EHS Operations in the Office of Environmental Health and Safety at Princeton University. She has over 24 years of experience in the health and safety field. She is a Certified Safety Professional and holds a M.S. in Safety, Security and Emergency Management with a certificate in Occupational Safety from Eastern Kentucky University.

Hazard Perception Storytelling Through The Lenses of Lab Managers and Researchers

Presented by Callan Kaut, Sr. Safety Specialist, Bioloical Safety

The most important stories are the stories we tell ourselves. What stories do researchers tell themselves about situations that safety professionals recognize as unsafe? This session will be an interactive Pecha Kucha focused on 10 scenarios and the researcher interpretations of those scenarios, which were collected via digital survey. Discussion will emphasize the culture of safety, hazard recognition, and strategies for strengthening the culture of safety through individual experiences.

Learning Objectives:

Seek to understand the perceptions of researchers regarding the hazards present in their work environments.
Propose underlying causes of complacency
Discuss strategies for improving hazard recognition and bridging the gap between researcher and safety perspectives

About the presenter
Callan Kaut started her career in safety in 2020 with the Biological Safety team at UT Southwestern, working with and supporting researchers of various backgrounds and expertise. She began her career as a Research Assistant/Research Technician in the Department of Cell Biology at UT Southwestern in 2010. She worked with learners of all ages over 8 years as the Gallery Engagement Manager, BioLab Coordinator, and School Programs Educator at the Perot Museum of Nature and Science in Dallas, TX, before coming back to UT Southwestern. She holds a Bachelor of Science in Cellular and Molecular Biology, with a Minor in Chemistry, from Westmont College in Santa Barbara, CA. She enjoys audio books and traditional printed books, particularly historical non-fiction and science fiction.

From Curation to Containment: One Journey Toward Making our Campus Art Collection Safer

Presented by Shaundree Davis, Assistant Director for Environmental Health

In 2002, Princeton University was gifted a large freeform lead covered structure that was created by architect and designer Frank Gehry. The structure is made of sheets of lead, which were hammer-formed over plywood framing that encases a semi-private meeting space. It is housed within the atrium of the Icahn Laboratory Building, where members of the campus community and the general public have daily access. Years of oxidation and dust accumulation on the structure’s exterior surface created removable particulate that contained lead. A plan to clean and encapsulate the structure was developed in an effort to remove this accumulation and prevent these conditions from reoccurring. Come and hear about the challenges we experienced and how we overcame them during the planning and execution of these efforts. A visit to the structure is also planned during the symposium.

Learning Objectives:

Learn about health and safety considerations
Explore the potential challenges posed by embarking on preservation activities for campus art collections

About the presenter
Shaundree Davis, CIH, CSP, REHS, is currently the Assistant Director for Environmental Health in the Office of Environmental Health and Safety at Princeton University. She has been a part of this team since 2011 and has been practicing in the occupational health and safety field for over 20 years, in a variety of settings and industries.

My stories - Valuable Lessons Learned

Presented by Joan Hutzly, Lab Safety Specialist

Learning Objectives:

About the presenter
Joan Hutzly, Lab Safety Specialist with Princeton University for 37 years. Managing the fume hood evaluation program, Asbestos & lead sampling, IH exposure monitoring & occasionally noise, Respirator fit-testing, Hazardous waste, Assist with radioactive technician duties when needed, IAQ.

18 story ideas, uses, experiments, and fun interventions you can choose from in 6+ minutes!

Presented by Jonathan Klane, Senior Safety Editor

In this 6+ minute Pecha Kucha session, I’ll describe 18 different story uses, ideas, experiments, and interventions that you can adopt, adapt, use, and/or will spur on other cool ideas of yours.

We all love stories. Yet we fail to use them in research or other EHS interventions. I’ll briefly describe 18 storytelling-based ideas for your selection and use on your campus. Although each description is only 20 seconds, I’ll include a complimentary and complementary list with added details and context so you won’t even need to scribble notes as fast as you can.

Storytelling helps us bond, relate, contextualize, make sense, survive, and communicate and are more powerful than data and info alone. Some of these are fully formed research experiments I designed as part of my PhD. Why not use stories in your EHS and research related projects?

Learning Objectives:

Describe 18 different ideas for how to incorporate stories and storytelling into campus and EHS related projects or research interventions
Choose from the 18 ideas for which might work better at your campus
Implement at least one new storytelling-based research, project, or intervention

About the presenter
Jonathan Klane, M.S.Ed., CIH, CSP, CHMM, CIT is a PhD candidate where he studies how stories affect our risk perceptions. He’s doing his dissertation on these two areas (plus adult learning and persuasion). He hopes to finish his PhD in human and social dimensions of science and technology at Arizona State University in the next year. After 35 years in EHS working in academia, teaching, and consulting, he enjoys writing articles on risk, lab safety, and our softer, power skills like storytelling, risk perceptions, persuasion, etc. As Senior Safety Editor for Lab Manager Magazine, he gets to share these and many technical areas with their readers and you. In his free time (measured to the left of zero), he writes both creative nonfiction and many fictional stories (as well as biking every day). He looks forward to completing work on his dissertation and having a life once again.

How to Improve Your Storytelling Skills and Craft in 60 Minutes or less!

Presented by Jonathan Klane, Senior Safety Editor

Ever notice that some folks are natural storytellers? What do they know that we don’t? Well, why not find out in an engaging session with someone who studies it and tells many risky stories?

Some questions we’ll answer include:
What’s the difference between the fabula and syuzhet (and which often works better)?
How soon should I get to the “what’s at stake”?
How do the inciting incident and obligatory scene relate?
How do I decide how much detail to include?
Which should I use – creative nonfiction or a fictional sovereign world I create?
What is the significance of the equation: expectation – result = gap?
What are key dos and don’ts for my characters?
What are the differences between the core value and the value charge?
How does a 5-part story structure work (and which three parts are key)?
What’s a story spine, its thread, beats, and turning points?
How should I end my story?

Stories have been well researched and told. Yet, many in EHS don’t use them as much as they could nor do folks know exactly how to construct them. Until now.

We’ll look at and tell story parts in order to dissect them and feel the stories come alive using specific aspects (or hear them fall flat when those key elements aren’t used well or at all).

Learning Objectives:

Describe story structure and aspects (e.g., what’s at stake, fabula vs. syuzhet, inciting incident, obligatory scene, thread and spine, beats and scenes)
Determine whether to use creative nonfiction, fiction’s sovereign world, or a fictionalized hybrid and the pros and cons of each
Explain many of the key essential elements of storytelling
Write affectively effective stories!

About the presenter
Jonathan Klane, M.S.Ed., CIH, CSP, CHMM, CIT is a PhD candidate where he studies how stories affect our risk perceptions. He’s doing his dissertation on these two areas (plus adult learning and persuasion). He hopes to finish his PhD in human and social dimensions of science and technology at Arizona State University in the next year. After 35 years in EHS working in academia, teaching, and consulting, he enjoys writing articles on risk, lab safety, and our softer, power skills like storytelling, risk perceptions, persuasion, etc. As Senior Safety Editor for Lab Manager Magazine, he gets to share these and many technical areas with their readers and you. In his free time (measured to the left of zero), he writes both creative nonfiction and many fictional stories (as well as biking every day). He looks forward to completing work on his dissertation and having a life once again.

Campus Tours

Princeton University Walking Tour

Wednesday, October 12, 2022 | 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM

Join us on a walking tour of the Princeton University Campus

CSHEMA - Campus Safety, Health, and Environmental Management Association