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“Safety first” echoes across industrial workplaces. This mantra illustrates a commitment to workers and a hazard-free, reliable environment. Yet, which practices truly make workers safe, and how are they determined and enforced? Don’t just follow or assume—thoroughly understand common risks and related mitigation tactics with an online graduate certificate in safety engineering from Missouri University of Science and Technology (Missouri S&T).
Safety engineering systems have far-reaching effects. Strategies and measures protect the health and wellbeing of your facility’s workers. Going beyond, they shield the public from exposure to potential hazards and guard against ecological disasters.
Helping advance your knowledge of safety protocols, this fully online graduate certificate considers such exposures in both general and industry-specific contexts. Learn to reduce risks, prevent accidents and decrease consequences to acceptable levels, with course topics building off your own experiences as an engineering or safety professional. A specialization track lets you tailor these brand-new concepts to improve your industry’s or facility’s approach to safety and successfully uphold relevant compliance measures.
Quick facts
Official name
Graduate certificate in safety engineeringCampus
Program type
Graduate certificateAcademic home
Kummer College of Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Economic DevelopmentDelivery mode
100% onlineAccreditation
Higher Learning CommissionCredit hours
12Estimated cost
$14,400.00Military credit hours
12Military estimated cost
$9,540.00*This cost is for illustrative purposes only. Your hours and costs will differ, depending on your transfer hours, your course choices and your academic progress. See more about tuition and financial aid.
Careers in safety engineering
Safety strongly influences both processes and outcomes in industrial, engineering, manufacturing and medical environments. Effective measures prioritize employee health, increase efficiency, reduce costs related to injuries and environmental disasters and help a facility continue to maintain regulatory compliance. At the same time, what constitutes safety constantly evolves.
New technologies, updated regulations and industry advances play a role in a facility’s safety designs and plans. In turn, maintaining such an environment and preserving the surrounding community takes dedication, awareness of best practices and detailed, industry-specific knowledge.
Whether you’re striving to advance your engineering career or develop a more technical perspective of your role, this online graduate certificate positions you to authoritatively advocate for a safer industrial environment that doesn’t compromise productivity or objectives. Elevating your skill set, this program highlights the latest challenges all industrial workplaces face, including risks and reliability, and prepares you to assess, quantify and present a solution to a potential hazard.
Career prospects
As technology overhauls industrial processes, more businesses are developing dedicated safety teams. These individuals take a strategic approach rooted in engineering principles to reduce risks. This involves:
- Identifying hazards with unacceptable consequences, either for the direct work environment or the community at large
- Practicing accident reduction to decrease their probability and potential consequences
- Lessening existing risks to more acceptable levels
Indicating this demand, the Bureau of Labor Statistics notes 7% more positions for occupational health and safety specialists and technicians and 6% more positions for health and safety engineers between 2020 and 2030.
Program structure
The online graduate certificate in safety engineering consists of four courses totaling 12 credit hours. The typical student takes one course per semester, finishing the program in two years. No on-campus visits are required.
For individuals who’ve earned at least a bachelor’s degree, this online certificate in safety engineering broadens your knowledge of a more advanced discipline while touching on the latest topics in a developing field. What you learn gives you a competitive edge in today’s marketplace.
To achieve this outcome, the online graduate certificate in safety engineering starts with two required courses. Risk Assessment and Reduction introduces methods for identifying and eliminating hazards to improve safety and security within manufacturing facilities. Safety Engineering Management goes over job safety analysis, reducing accident rates, protective equipment, safety rules and regulations and environmental, health and ergonomic hazards and their applications in industrial environments.
From here, you’ll choose from one of eight specialization tracks to take two additional courses:
Chemical/metallurgical process safety: Learn to prevent injuries and environmental disasters in chemical manufacturing and mineral extraction. Grow your understanding of chemical process safety, plantwide process control methods and environmental factors.
Safety engineering management: Gain insight into how design can prevent or reduce workplace accidents. You’ll learn to analyze, assess and propose solutions rooted in the reliability of industrial systems operation, stochastic programming, optimization and dynamic programming.
Process control systems: Concepts based on industrial control systems help you find a balance among consistency, economy and safety within a facility’s production processes. Learn to develop safer, more precise manufacturing protocols through courses in mechatronics, plantwide processes, chemical process safety and network security.
Nuclear process safety: Better prevent accidents and reduce environmental exposure related to radiation hazards. Ideal for individuals working in power plants or facilities transporting or storing nuclear materials, this track covers the nuclear fuel cycle, power plant systems, radiological engineering, nuclear reactor safety and risk assessments.
Nuclear material safety: Create a safer environment for processing, transporting and handling nuclear materials. Courses increase your awareness of nuclear radiation measurements, the fuel cycle, radiological engineering radiation shielding and applied health physics.
Radiological health and safety: Ideal for those in the medical field, this specialization track helps you develop more effective radiation protection measures for employees and the public. Select from courses in applied health physics, the nuclear fuel cycle, radiation measurements, radiological engineering and radiation shielding.
Human factors: Design and related human behaviors directly influence the safety of facilities and equipment. Encompassing environmental, job and organizational aspects, courses in toxicology, industrial psychology and environmental psychology highlight techniques for improving product safety and performance in relation to natural human responses.
Reliability: Understanding the theory of reliability helps you lessen errors within industrial processes, including equipment operation and relevant safety measures. Learn how to apply reliability principles to better manage equipment, and predict and lessen related risks.
Review all courses and descriptions for the online graduate certificate in safety engineering.
Delivery
100% onlineCalendar system
Semester-basedTypical program length
2 yearsTypical course load
1 class per semesterPathway to a master's
Propel your career even further. The credit hours you earn through the graduate certificate in safety engineering can be applied toward a master of science in engineering management from Missouri S&T. Gain a credential to step up into a leadership role without submitting GRE scores.
How does this work? Once you complete the graduate certificate program with a B average or better, you can apply to the corresponding master’s degree program without submitting GRE scores. Students taking this pathway benefit from more relaxed admission requirements, as your performance in the safety engineering certificate courses shows you can be successful learning more about engineering management in a graduate program.
Once accepted, your 12 credit hours assist with fulfilling general requirements.
Have you already completed a master’s but want to pursue a PhD? Missouri S&T requires candidates at this stage to submit GRE scores with their application.
Accreditation
Missouri University of Science and Technology is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission, one of six regional institutional accreditors in the United States.
Faculty spotlight
Dr. Corns earned his doctorate from Iowa State University in 2008. He teaches courses in organizational intelligence and optimization and uncertainty management. His areas of interest include computational intelligence, complex systems, bioinformatics, infrastructure system modeling, autonomous systems, systems engineering.