The field of Health and Safety should not be confused with the field of Safety Engineering. The more formal title for Health and Safety is Occupational Safety and Health. While Safety Engineering is a full-fledged branch of Engineering, Occupational Safety and Health is more of a scientific, medical, technical, managerial, & regulatory domain. This is reflected in its administration in the country by Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) coming under the US Department of Labor, and The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) under the US Department of Health and Human Services.

What it Involves

Health and Safety Distance Learning involves taking an Associate, Bachelors, or Graduate Degree in Occupational Safety and Health through the distance or online mode. Several Graduate and Undergraduate Certificate Courses are also available. Those planning to become Health and Safety Technicians can go for an Associate or even a Certificate Course, while those aspiring to become Health and Safety Specialists should go for at least a Bachelors, as the main employer in the domain, the Federal and State Governments, have fixed it as the minimum qualification.

However, there are more Graduate Degree Courses in Health and Safety Distance Learning than Bachelors or Associate Degree Courses. This is mainly driven by the private sector’s preference to employ Graduate experts with a firm background in supporting subjects like Science or Medicine.

Various professional certifications available in this domain like the Certified Safety Professional (CSP), Certified Industrial Hygienist (CIH), Occupational Health and Safety Technologist (OHST) require passing stringent examinations, and the training for them are also available through Health and Safety Distance Learning.

Why Health and Safety?

The discipline of Occupational Safety and Health is a fast growing field that is concerned with the safety and health of employees, customers, and the public. While the best managed companies go in for elaborate Health and Safety Departments to stand out in business ethics and cut the loss of employee productivity, many others are forced to create a Health and Safety program, at least to comply with the civil and criminal laws and thus avoid litigation. This has resulted in the field growing steadily over the past several years, and is expected to grow even further, through the next ten years.

Specialists and Technicians in this field get to work in large private firms or Governments (Federal, State, or Local), where the overall benefits will be much better than in smaller organizations. Most Health and Safety Specialists earn approximately between US $40,000 to US $80,000, while Technicians can expect a salary between US $30,000 to US $70,000.

Why Health and Safety Distance Learning?

Since it is a critical service, the private sector as well as governments demand experience in the field as a prerequisite for employment. This has resulted in a preference for those already exposed to the domain, due to work in an allied field obtained after undergraduate education in engineering, biology, or chemistry. As such, it is very important for those aspiring to be a Health and Safety Professional to undertake simultaneous work in this domain or in an allied field. The best option for such candidates is Health and Safety Distance Learning.

Universities & Colleges Offering Health and Safety Distance Learning

Many Universities and colleges offer Health and Safety Distance Learning courses, but the course names tend to be very different from each other. Tulane University offers three Graduate Degrees in the field, which are distinguished for their real-time, live interaction sessions over the internet. Spanning two years, these courses are Masters of Public Health (MPH) in Occupational Health and Safety Management, MPH in Occupational Health for Health Professionals, and Master of Science in Public Health (MSPH) in Industrial Hygiene.

Indiana State University offers a Master of Science in Health and Safety, with a specialization in Occupational Safety Management. The course delivery is primarily through television, but a weekly personal interaction with the instructor might be necessary.

Montana Tech Graduate School of University of Montana offers an online M.S. in Industrial Hygiene. Featuring advanced study in Occupational Health, the course also equips the students for the certification program by American Board for Industrial Hygiene. Montana Tech makes no distinctions between its regular and online students for this course.

Apart from such prestigious Universities, many smaller institutions also offer Health and Safety Distance Learning. However, prospective students need to ascertain the accreditation details as numerous institutions with poor accreditations also offer these courses.

The field of Safety Engineering should not be confused with the related but clearly distinct field of Occupational Health and Safety, sometimes called as just Health and Safety. To add to the confusion, Safety Engineering is often titled Health and Safety Engineering, by some institutions and industry segments. Academically, the most distinguishing factor between the two allied fields is that while Occupational Health and Safety might have Applied Science, Engineering, and Management components, Safety Engineering is purely an engineering branch.

What it Involves

Safety Distance Learning Masters involves taking a Master of Science (M.S.) or Master of Engineering (M.E.) degree in Safety Engineering, or Health and Safety Engineering, or in Systems Engineering with emphasis on Safety Engineering, from Universities or Colleges offering these courses through the online or distant mode. Generally, Safety Distance Learning Masters is attempted by working engineers with a Bachelor Degree in branches like Mechanical, Production, Industrial, Chemical, Electrical, or Civil, who can put Safety Engineering to use in their domains.

Due to the shorter history of the subject, the available courses in Safety Distance Learning Masters are somewhat limited in number, and it might be necessary to also look at Systems Engineering courses with main or partial emphasis on Safety Engineering, to find a suitable degree in this subject. Membership in the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE), and the Certified Safety Professional (CSP) certification from the Board of Certified Safety Professionals (BCSP), can also be attempted by working engineers opting for Safety Distance Learning Masters.

Why Safety Engineering?

The majority of Safety Engineers with a Master Degree get an average salary of more than US $63,000, which can go up to more than US $92,000 depending upon on experience, expertise, and certifications like CSP. However, it is not financial prospects alone that are attracting more and more engineers to take up Safety Engineering – it has more to do with the increasingly important role these professionals have come to assume in design teams, during the past several years.

Though many aspects of Safety Engineering have been in practice since the early 1900s, it was only very recently that Safety Engineering gathered prominence and momentum in the industry as an engineering branch in its own might. The problem was that though Safety Engineers were always part of the engineering team, their role was limited to inspecting completed projects for possible hazards, and recommending additional modules to overcome the detected safety problems. Such an ad-hoc approach to Safety Engineering – often called ‘Industrial Safety’ – is followed even to this day in industries like Chemical Manufacturing. The real revolution in Safety Engineering happened when the US Military realized that ‘Industrial Safety’ is not enough for complex mission-critical applications like Aerospace, Space Shuttles, Nuclear Reactors, Submarines, and Inter-Continental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM). The newly developed Systems Approach – as in Systems Engineering – was applied to Safety Engineering, to come up with what is today termed as System Safety, and is the main reason behind Safety Engineering’s prominence, today.

In contrast with the earlier ‘Industrial Safety’ methods, System Safety procedures ensure the Safety Engineer’s role in the design team from the preliminary design phase itself. No stage of the design passes to the next stage without the Safety Engineer’s approval, and it is often half-jokingly told that Safety Engineers say the last word in design!

Today, Safety Engineering’s Systems Approach is found not only in military or mission-critical applications, but throughout the industry, and in various civilian infrastructure projects like undersea tunnels and earthquake resistant high-rises, thereby fuelling the demand for Safety Engineers.

Why Safety Distance Learning Masters?

Since the subject is less intensive on hands-on lab work, and more intensive on engineering mathematics, decision making structures, predictive models, and specialized Safety Engineering software packages (like, CAFTA used for Nuclear Reactors, and SAPHIRE used for Space Shuttles), Safety Distance Learning Masters is very much deliverable using current distance or online technologies.

The fact that the majority of aspirants for Safety Distance Learning Masters, are working engineers, adds to its attraction as the preferred mode for this subject.

What to Expect from Safety Distance Learning Masters, in the Future?

Federal Government and various R&D oriented Government Agencies like NASA, DOE, USAF, etc. continues to be the major employers of Safety Engineers in the USA. However, this is rapidly changing with the private sector industries going for Safety Engineering in a big way. This demand will see more and more courses and options coming up in Safety Distance Learning Masters.