In Spring 2024, the ESPM Field Safety Committee presented a list of departmental recommendations to the faculty and leadership of the department. You can find that here. This was voted against. In Fall 2024, we met with faculty members to address key concerns and rewrite a smaller, more actionable set of recommendations. You can find these updated recommendations here. This was successfully approved in late Fall 2024 and will begin to be implemented in 2025.
In summary, the approved recommendations include the following changes that directly relate to graduate students:
Graduate student prospectuses and annual review forms will now include a question about whether you conduct fieldwork. It is recommended that prospectuses include field safety plans if fieldwork is conducted.
ESPM 201A and 375 will now include at least one session on field safety.
The ESPM Field Safety Committee will create and share a checklist of best practices for teaching classes with a field component.
The ESPM Field Safety Committee will share the “know your rights” document with incoming graduate students and post a flyer version in Mulford.
The departmental changes include:
The department will commit funds to pay for in-person safety training yearly.
The department will obtain satellite communication devices for shared use.
The department will address field safety in promotion letters for faculty.
The instruction chair will keep an updated list of which courses contain a fieldwork component. The department manager will keep a list of faculty conducting fieldwork.
The department manager will request field safety plans yearly from faculty conducting fieldwork or teaching courses with fieldwork components.
Incoming faculty will have onboarding training specifically explaining field safety and available resources.
The department will advocate for hiring a Travel Security Manager.
We recommend reading the document in its entirety if you are interested in the timeline for implementation, justification, or legal considerations that went into these recommendations.
In Spring 2024, the ESPM Field Safety Committee conducted field safety surveys with students in field courses and researchers conducting fieldwork across RCNR and IB. The Report on 2024 Field Safety Surveys provides details on our methodology and findings.
Our conclusions were challenging. There are substantial, serious, and common safety issues found in both research and teaching settings across the surveyed departments. These issues are more severe for women and non-binary individuals, reflecting the intersection of field safety with campus equity and inclusion priorities.
Changes to institutional culture and risk management processes are potentially valuable methods to effect change. The high prevalence of reported minor incidents and near misses suggests that future safety incidents with low probability but high severity are possible unless immediate changes are made.