Degrees in Work Environment Policy

The Department of Work Environment offers a master's and a doctoral degree in Work Environment Policy. Credit requirements for all Master of Science Programs is now 36 credits (down from 45). The Department also offers a related graduate certificate in Environmental Risk Assessment.

The policy analyst must understand the interaction between science and scientific uncertainty in occupational and environmental health, and the politics of the workplace setting. The fields of occupational and environmental health are integrated by the practical focus on actual workplace conditions: policy is based on the science; engineering and political economy provide the solutions.

The Work Environment Policy concentration accepts students from a wide variety of backgrounds, including physicians and lawyers, as well as those with training in the social sciences who wish to be policy analysts in academia, government agencies and organizations concerned with affecting environmental health and worker safety and health.

Degrees

Master's Degree in Work Environment Policy

All Policy students must take the Work Environment Core (15 credits) and 15 credits of Work Environment Policy concentration courses. The curriculum allows the student to choose six credits in electives.

Examples of areas of research encouraged for doctoral work are: international occupational and environmental health, integration of occupational and environmental health policies, economic impacts of occupational injury and illness, integration of materials policy and health policy, environmental justice and urban ecology, labor and technology, regulatory policy, occupational health and labor/management programs, alternative methods of risk assessment, health and safety impacts of new technologies, management of chemical information, toxics use reduction.

Faculty

Lenore Azaroff, Ken Geiser, Robert Karasek, Rafael Moure-Eraso, Margaret Quinn, Joel Tickner