On Volunteering and OHS Practice

Yo, it�s been a while. I can officially say that my second year as an academic was in no way easier than my first year, even though I had most of my classes already prepared. I found other things to fill the time I thought I would have � most of the things were some form of service or volunteering.

I spent the morning hand writing thank you cards (yes, I am someone who still does that!) to my guest speakers from winter and spring quarter, and was reflecting on how important volunteer work has been to my growth as an occupational health and safety (OHS) professional.

Back in 2010, when I was four years out of college and just getting a handle on my career, my local Arizona Chapter of the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) had a Healthcare Section. The primary clients I served as an OHS consultant were healthcare facilities, so I started out as the Secretary of the Healthcare Section and then became the Chair. In this role, I learned how to use MailChimp, how to take decent meeting minutes, how to market our educational meetings to members and non-members, and had the opportunity to network with healthcare OHS professionals from all over the U.S.

After almost four years in that role, I switched my focus to volunteering with the Industrial Hygiene Practice Specialty (IHPS) of ASSE, starting as their Social Media and Website person, and moving into the Publications Chair role after a year or so. In my three years as Publications Chair (now called the Content Coordinator), I became proficient with LinkedIn networking, soliciting articles from members and non-members for our web-based publication, writing articles for the publication, editing submitted articles for the publication, and understanding the role of social media in OHS advocacy.

Within IHPS, I have served (officially and unofficially) in many roles, but my favorite role was Executive Secretary � it felt like I was at the heart of everything IHPS was doing. As Executive Secretary, I kept the minutes from our Volunteer Advisory Committee meetings and was able to help organize and participate in two free webinars (we call them �open calls�) for our membership, one on healthcare safety and another on hazardous drugs handling, spill clean-up and exposure assessment. I was also able to help with ASSE�s comments to NIOSH about the occupational exposure banding guidance.

Thanks to my involvement in IHPS, I was able to participate in the House of Delegates and Council on Practices and Standards (CoPS). I was also selected to speak at Safety 2016 in Atlanta and Safety 2017 in Denver. I don�t know if I would have been brave enough to submit a proposal to speak if I was not so involved in ASSE. Thanks to the local and regional events I spoke at in Arizona, I felt I was ready to take things to the next level.

In 2016, I took on an even more daunting role. After losing the election for Assistant Administrator for IHPS, I emailed ASSE staff and asked them which practice specialty needed help � where my efforts could do the most good. I ran for Assistant Administrator of the Training and Communications Practice Specialty (TCPS) and won. I take over as Administrator of TCPS in July 2018, which is pretty exciting.

In 2016, I also moved away from my Arizona ASSE Chapter, where I had many friends and contacts, to join Central Washington University (CWU). I became a member of the Puget Sound ASSE Chapter. Since their meetings are in the early mornings in downtown Seattle, I haven�t been able to attend due to my teaching schedule, but I spent the last two years on the Puget Sound ASSE Professional Development Conference (PDC) planning committee. Being part of the planning committee has helped me network with local OHS professionals, and I was lucky enough to co-present at this year's conference with the incredible Jeff Dalto of Convergence Training (recap and details here).

This year, I served as the Faculty Advisor for my CWU ASSE Student Section, helping them organize guest speakers, volunteer activities, and interest other CWU students in safety. We submitted an application for the Outstanding Student Section Award (OSSA) and were #3 out of 19 qualifying schools. We conducted a personal protective equipment (PPE) drive with CWU Safety and Health Management alumni from Mortenson, sending 3 packed boxes of PPE to the University of Puerto Rico to help with hurricane reconstruction efforts.

So, to sum up, this academic year I served ASSE in the following roles:

• Assistant Administrator of TCPS 
• Executive Secretary of IHPS for half the year, and now Professional Development Chair of IHPS 
• Puget Sound ASSE PDC planning committee 
• Faculty Advisor for CWU ASSE Student Section

In return for my volunteer efforts with ASSE, I have:

• Made lifelong friends who I love seeing at conferences 
• Built an impressive network of excellent OHS professionals 
• Improved my technical writing and editing skills 
• Become comfortable living part of my professional life online 
• Gained experience organizing seminars and conferences 
• Learned consensus building and conflict management 
• Had the opportunity to speak at local, regional, and national-level events 
• Been published in Professional Safety (March 2018 issue, useful summary here) 
• And much more! 

Why the long post sharing my experience volunteering for ASSE? I�ve been volunteering for 8 years now, and I�m looking forward to the next 8. Or 20, or however long my professional career in OHS lasts. I want to encourage the next generation to get involved with ASSE early in their career, like I did, and reap the personal and professional benefits.

All of the skills I obtained through my volunteer work have benefited my career.  If it hadn�t been for some careful nudging by my various mentors through the years, I might not have �put myself out there� and started volunteering.

The Industrious Hygienist is back and more determined than ever!

Will you answer the call? Will you share your experience and your expertise, and help build the future of OHS practice through advocacy and volunteer leadership? Or will you just watch it happen? #NextGenSafety #IndustriousHygienist #TalkSafetyWithUs

New Year, New Industrious Hygienist

Sincere apologies for the months-long delay between posts. I don't really have an excuse, except the last few months have been busy with work, writing, and attempting to learn how to use my new manga markers. I'm stuck trying to figure out what this blog should become, now that I'm not consulting anymore. 

• Is it yet another "life as a professor" blog? (meh, we don't really need more of those) 
• Is it me trying to become a manga artist and posting my awful art that slowly becomes better and more my style? (maybe, but the internet doesn't deserve that right now)
• Is it more sock puppets? (these take a ton of work/time, so I hope not)
• Is it (please say it isn't) another "I want to be a writer, so I'm writing about writing instead of actually finishing my own work" blog? (nope)
• Is it my random thoughts on safety and human factors? (sometimes, probably)

When I figure out what this blog is, I'll feel a bit less anxious about it just sitting on the internet, gathering a tiny amount of views. I'm more or less over drawing the Industrious Hygienist (#industrioushygienist) mangas for now. While there are a ton of consulting malarkey stories I still need to tell, I'm not a good enough manga-ka right now to do them justice. Plus, as I've noted before, I'm still slow at the drawing, inking, and coloring, so each 8.5"x11" page takes me 6 to 8 hours from start to finish. Currently, I don't have that kind of time on the weekends. 

My point of pride for the end of the year: I went on a Naruto (#naruto) and Bleach (#bleach) anime spree over winter break. I'll blame the fact that I was sick for 8 days right after winter break started and I'd submitted grades for my classes. Trying to figure out the jutsu hand seals while hopped up on Day-Quil is ... funny and surprisingly difficult. Turns out that I am not very coordinated on cold medication. It was strange to try and explain to my parents and grandparents that I was not just "watching cartoons" and this is completely normal behavior for adults in Japan.

As is my habit, I like to spend New Year's Eve doing something I don't normally have time to do, while pondering how the year went. I started out drawing one of my characters from a short story, but it somehow became a manga of me. I didn't realize it until I was drawing the necklace, so that was sort of weird, but nice to be in the "flow" of the art. The new markers are fun to use!

The Industrious Hygienist in her "professor" look.
Yes, that is a flannel shirt - we're in the PNW, after all.

In 2017, I accomplished or learned the following: 

• I'm officially a published author - thanks to @dreamingrobotpress for their awesome 2018 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide and the opportunity to share my short story, "On the Lam on Luna" with middle grade readers.
• I submitted another short story yesterday to the 2019 Young Explorer's Adventure Guide. It was co-written by me and the exceptional spouse, and is awesome. We hope they like it. 
• I started a doctorate in March 2017 and have completed 3 classes so far. It's a Doctor of Education (Ed.D.) in Health Professions from A.T. Still University. I have all A's so far, but am dreading the quantitative analysis (statistics) course.
• I started my second year of working as an Assistant Professor of Safety and Health Management at Central Washington University. Contrary to what I believed last year, the second year has not been easier and I've been working harder than ever. 
• I bought almost 4 hours of J-pop music (mostly songs from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Naruto, Bleach, and Vampire Knight) and have the tunes and sounds memorized. Now on to trying to learn some Japanese.
• I bought a new oven (ours died a slow death) and am not worried about giving myself food poisoning from undercooked food anymore. 
• I started exercising at least four times a week, getting up at 5:30am to be ready for work by 8:00am. Imagine me on a mini-trampoline, watching anime while I jump around like a goofball. I've been boxing too, which is a very satisfying experience.
• Over the summer, I completed the first draft of a historical fiction novel co-written by me and the exceptional spouse. The spouse has it now, and after a merry game of tug of war about whether I would give him the actual manuscript to track changes on, he is making edits and finding ways to improve the scenes. More on this when it is done and ready for Kindle...
• I spoke at Safety 2017 (annual professional development conference for the American Society of Safety Engineers) with a colleague. Our proposal to speak was not accepted for 2018, so I'll be staying home from conferences next year. I plan to spend the entire summer writing, drawing, and playing the piano, violin, and clarinet. Maybe a little bit of class preparation, but only enough to not feel stressed when fall quarter starts again.

There are probably some other things that I've forgotten to list, but those are the big ones. My realistic goals for 2018 are to: 1) keep getting A's in my doctorate classes, 2) finish the historical fiction book(s), 3) keep exercising, 4) take a real vacation with the exceptional spouse, and 5) figure out what this blog is going to be. Perhaps I'll also determine my manga style and get better at drawing with some more practice. 

New manga markers!

For my birthday, I bought myself some new manga markers with the Amazon gift card my parents gave me. I am so excited to learn how to use them! I also bought some new manga paper to see how it differs from the multipurpose computer paper I usually use.

Things purchased:

• U.S. Art Supply 9"x12" manga-marker paper
• Master Markers Manga & Primary Tones 24-pack
• The Art of Vampire Knight - Matsuri Hino Illustrations

Rather than be reasonable and practice in short sessions with the markers and paper, I dove in and recreated one of my favorite panels from my other favorite manga/anime: Vampire Knight. It turned out better than I anticipated, so I decided to post it as a new milestone in my mangaka journey.


Some notes:

• Yup, I am aware the Day Class uniforms are black. At the moment, I only have a weird mix of primary colors and grays. No black marker in the set. So I improvised with blue! Same with Yuki's hair color, improvised with the sienna brown marker I have. 
• Character names are Zero and Yuki, brought to you by the incredible Matsuri Hino. 
• Therefore, this is fan art...while I try to figure out my own style. 
• The paper I purchased does NOT let you erase once you have inked, so I'll be looking for a different long-term paper. Hence the pencil marks.

I hope you enjoy the new art, which will be posted sporadically as I find time on weekends between teaching, my doctorate studies, and life in general.

Yuki and Zero from Vampire Knight.

I anticipate that my own art and characters will be a hybrid of Hiromu Arakawa + Matsuri Hino + Hayao Miyazaki, since they are the artists I enjoy the most.