November 2017 President’s Message

Greetings:

Lately, I have begun to spend more and more time in thought about how we, as “experienced” EHS professionals can ignite passion, mentor and work to develop the next generation of Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics or STEM students, to go into IH and EHS career paths so that we can pass the torch as our time comes to do that. At our summer Executive Committee (EC) planning meeting this past August, we identified
increased student outreach and an accelerated student scholarship initiative as two of our top priorities for the coming year. We see this as an imperative that we must better connect with high school, community college and our larger colleges and universities offering STEM curriculums and EHS degrees!

To that end, I am asking your help on a couple aspects of advancing this effort:

• Our 2018 scholarship program has already been launched and posted on our website (http://www.njaiha.org/students/2018-scholarships/). We are asking ALL our members to help in promoting this effort. Over the last couple of years, our scholarship budget has continued to be
  increased in the hopes that we will be able to recognize more students – and help to better connect them to this great program and our NJAIHA section;
• If you are interested or already active in teaching, presenting, mentoring of students who are interested in EHS degrees and careers, we would like to start a more formalized speaker’s bureau to promote and educate students about what we do; and
• Ultimately, our goal would be to ignite enough interest to start a student chapter of AIHA here in NJ. How cool would that be?

If you know a student who might qualify for a NJAIHA scholarship, please have them fill out and submit the application on our website or reach out to Candice Kowalewski, our Director of Membership, Brian Feury, our Director of Administration, or any other EC member you may know to show your interest and/or ideas.

Each one of us chose an IH, safety or environmental career path because we had a passion to do so – and most likely, because we saw an opportunity to make a difference. We need to pass this passion on to our young people, those STEM students who will follow in our footsteps and continue to protect our workers and our communities.

I hope that each and every one of our members sees this as truly one of our greatest mandates and if we are successful – this would be a truly great lasting legacy we could all be very proud of. I hope you will join in and share your enthusiasm for this with us on the EC and lend your shoulder to the wheel.

Thanks and we look forward to your help on this important effort.

I hope to see you at the November Meeting.

Best Regards,
Craig R. Doolittle, PE, CSP
President NJAIHA