EHS-101 or 1001 Introductory Course in College Education—A Critical Review of EHS Elements

The education and training on environmental, health, and safety (EHS) principles to the future workforce is critical. Worldwide, EHS (or SHE or HSE, the multi-way-acronym) educational and training programs need to produce effective leaders, since the EHS-compliance requirements must be accomplished by day-to-day workforce of all entities—government, industrial, institutional, and commercial facilities. The effective understanding of environmental (air, water, waste, and soil), and health and safety (including, “security”) regulatory requirements is critical at all workplaces. The elements of EHSs would include (not limited to): fundamentals; regulations and regulators; environmental permitting and compliance; workplace health and safety (and, security); audit; economics; ethics; and, the leadership. EHS should also be explained to the students with reference to “sustainability” and “resiliency.” Author, with work experience in the government, industrial, municipal, and academia settings, has successfully offered a semester long introductory EHS course at a 4-year college program providing instruction on the EHS elements as included above and, the real-time experience was also provided to the class via field visit and guest lectures. Moreover, since this course would be of interest or is offered to various majors and minors, the teaching and grading of this potential combination of students would need to be planned and a successful instruction must be accomplished. Thus, this paper is elucidated on the introductory level EHS course and its critical elements of instruction.