Program Description

The University of Pittsburgh’s Swanson School of Engineering (SSoE) has created a Safety Engineering graduate program dedicated to meeting the nation’s critical and ongoing workforce development needs for safety engineering professionals. By offering a distance-enabled Graduate-Level Certificate in Safety Engineering, the University of Pittsburgh’s Department of Industrial Engineering (IE) furthers its commitment to make a major contribution to the Pittsburgh region’s industrial, oil and gas, nuclear, construction, healthcare and other workforce development needs. By offering this unique program in several critical industry sectors, IE is well-positioned to build a technical base of competency to address the safety engineering needs of regional and national employers, as well as to bring publicity and notoriety to the Pittsburgh region.

The graduate Safety Engineering Certificate program was developed to meet the ever-increasing importance of and need for engineers to be trained in the application and implementation of safety engineering concepts, principles and practices. The increasing presence of the oil and gas industry in the region, the increasing emphasis on world-wide nuclear energy, the increasing evidence of safety-related concerns and injuries in the healthcare industry and the sustained concern of safety engineering in construction, manufacturing and mining have fueled the interest in and implementation of this certificate program.

The certificate is intended for engineers seeking training in safety engineering to enhance their operational abilities or if they become newly assigned to positions that have higher levels of safety engineering responsibilities. The certificate will also enhance the capabilities of non-engineering based safety professionals seeking training in safety engineering.

Safety is fundamental to planning, construction and installation, operation, maintenance and dismantling and disposal, etc. Therefore, it has a place in all industries at all points in the life cycle. This certificate program, through its acceptance criteria, course work and design experiences, produces trained engineers with a fundamental background in safety engineering where quantitative analysis methods and design principles are thoroughly covered.

The safety engineering field is governed by several well-recognized and widely-known certifying entities. These entities require that board certified safety professionals maintain their certifications through specific educational and work-experience related activities. Most state engineering licensing boards also require that licensees actively seek on-going education and knowledge development. The proposed certificate program affords the opportunity for engineers and other working professionals to maintain their certifications and licensure.

Program Objectives

Equip the engineering professionals taking these courses with broader capabilities in safety engineering-related analytical skills, problem solving and solutions design.

Engineers will acquire a more thorough and in depth understanding of critical operational safety related hazards.

Engineers will gain an understanding and an ability to analyze dynamic hazard scenarios and design protective systems preventing those hazards from manifesting themselves into injuries, fires, explosions, releases, etc.

Engineers will be able to analyze and quantify risk as well as be able to apply risk-based safety and business decision making.

Engineers will gain an understanding of human performance and human-based system.

Provide for the energy, health care, manufacturing and construction industries, a pool of engineering professionals qualified to address the challenges posed by the hazardous nature of our industries.

Admissions

The admission requirements for the graduate certificate program are equivalent to the admission requirements for the MS in Industrial Engineering. https://app.applyyourself.com/AYApplicantLogin/fl_ApplicantLogin.asp?id=up-e . One would just click the appropriate “certificate” box on the application indicating their interest in applying for the safety engineering certificate program. If one does not have an undergraduate engineering degree, work experience will be considered and with the approval of the program director and an additional leveling course or two (depending on the nature of the degree held), one can still be admitted to the program.

Students already enrolled in the Swanson School of Engineering may apply for admission to the program by contacting their respective Graduate Coordinator. Certificate admission may be initiated anytime after the applicant has been admitted to the degree program. Once approved by the coordinator, the certificate applicant will submit to the certificate admission committee a brief statement addressing interest in safety engineering, previous experience and areas of interest with safety engineering and their relation to career goals.

Prerequisite Courses

There are no prerequisite courses for this program, however if an applicant does not have an undergraduate engineering degree, there may be some additional courses required for acceptance in the program. This will be determined by the program director in consideration of the applicant’s work experience and undergraduate degree.

Possible considerations may be:

IE-2000 Fundamentals of Industrial Engineering

IE-2001 Operations Research

IE-2005 Probability and Statistics

Core Courses (must take all three)

IE-2301 Introduction to Safety Engineering

IE-2302 Engineering for Process Safety

IE-2303 Work Design

Elective Courses (must take any two – this list will be dynamic and other courses will be added as the program is implemented)

Bioengineering Courses

BIOENG-2725 Design for Injury Prevention

Civil and Environmental Engineering Courses (including Mining Engineering Certificate)

CEE2201 Construction Cost Estimating

CEE2202 Construction Scheduling

CEE2203 Construction Methods and Equipment

CEE2207 Construction & Cost of Mechanical Systems

CEE2230 Building Information Modeling

CEE2347 Bridge Engineering

CEE2700 Traffic Management Operations

CEE2711 ITS Operations and Design

CEE2725 Public Transportation Systems

CEE2730 Highway Engineering

CEE2750 Project Development and Implementation

ENGR2710 Traffic Control Systems

ENGR2205 Construction Finance and Cost Control

ENGR2725 Public Transportation Systems

ENGR2633 Minerals Industry Risk Management

ENGR2638 Mining Health and Safety

ENGR2639 Mine Evaluation and Management

ENGR2635 Mine Ventilation Engineering

Electrical and Computer Engineering Courses

ECE2646 Special Topics (Advanced Power Electronics or Smart Grid Technologies and Applications)

ECE2777 Power System Transients 1 (offered every even numbered year)

ECE2774 Power Systems Engineering and Analysis II

ECE2250 Power Electronics Circuits and Applications

ECE2795 Special Topics: Protective Relaying and Automation

ECE2795 Special Topics: Renewable and Alternative Energy Systems

Mechanical Engineering and Materials Sciences (including Nuclear Engineering certificate)

ENGR2102 Nuclear Plant Dynamics and Control

ENGR2130 Environmental Issues & Solutions for Nuclear Power

ENGR2115 Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow

ENGR2100 Fundamentals of Nuclear Engineering

ENGR2103 Integration of Nuclear Plants with the Reactor Core

ENGR2112 Nuclear Chemistry and Radiochemistry

ENGR2125 Case Studies in Nuclear Codes and Standards

ENGR2110 Nuclear Materials

ENGR2120 Mathematical Modeling of Nuclear Plants

ENGR2104 Nuclear Operation Safety

ENGR2105 Heat and Mass Transfer

ME2053 Heat and Mass transfer

ME2045 Linear Control System