Pre-Wrap Up

As the semester comes to an end at State, everyone's busy with finals and I myself have a few things to do for EGR 393, my experiential education class. Although my co-op ends in June, I will do a little pre-wrap up now for those involved with EGR 393.

I initially entered my co-op with the notion that I would be doing risk assessments, a method of evaluating the possible risks of hazards that are generated in a location, from a task, or from a machine. I ended up completing my tasked list of risk assessments within about 3 weeks, my manager expected it to take 6 months. So now what? I did a bunch of training available through Unilever, I learned a lot more about supply chain and about the business practices of Unilever - this is a great benefit from working for a large company. I also was able to dip into my creativity and design two employee motivational programs while I was here. The first was based of the Olympics, with themed events like a poster contest and a race for safe ideas, it went on during the Olympics to remind workers to think safe as they saw The Games on TV that night. The second, which is still going on, is a challenge to report more near misses - events which could have resulted in injury - and change those situations quickly so it won't happen again. For the next month I will continue to do risk assessments on new products and I will continue to advocate the Near Miss Challenge. My main hurdle right now is to prepare for our final presentation on June 3rd, 10 minutes alone in a room with directors and VP's explaining what we've done for the past six months and how Unilever benefited. I'm nervous already, but I'm starting to prepare now, by June 3rd I will be ready.

I have had such a wonderful experience working for Unilever, it is an opportunity I would recommend to anyone. I was very pleased to find a career choice I can see myself doing and have some initial practice with it in a real working environment. I have mentioned before that although I definitely am set on a chemical engineering degree, I want it more for the background and less for the actual engineering of chemicals. Safety allows me to do just that, it's a field where technical background is required, but it really has nothing to do with chemical engineering. I am so thankful Unilever chose me for this program and introduced me to safety, I now plan on taking some OSHA classes before graduation to further my career in safety.