Graduate Certificate in Mining Occupational Safety and Health Overview
The Mine Safety and Health Administration inspects roughly 14,400 mines each year for compliance with occupational and health regulations. Each of these sites requires the expertise of safety-minded professionals to ensure that every measure is taken to prevent risks for the workers who make energy production and industrial processes possible. Dedicated, well-trained specialists in mining safety make a difference by enforcing stringent safety measures, mitigating dangers, and promoting best practices.
The online Graduate Certificate in Mining Occupational Safety and Health can help you rise to the challenge of creating a hazardless mining environment. You’ll complete advanced coursework in ventilation, geomechanics, chemical exposure, and other fundamental areas, learning to design processes and procedures that minimize the inherent risks of excavation. Each of our mining certificate courses has been designed with the input of experts in the industry and is taught by leading University of Arizona faculty members.
Arizona leads the US in value of non-fuel mineral production as the top producer of copper and a major source of other minerals such as crude perlite, molybdenum, and silver. The University of Arizona Department of Mining and Geological Engineering is the state’s sole provider of university-level educational and research programs in engineering minerals and nonrenewable resources. Our faculty lead the technological and scientific breakthroughs that will shape the future of mine engineering and safety.
Working professionals can complete this cutting-edge, specialized training entirely online, so you can fit advanced education into your busy schedule. By completing a mining safety management certificate, you’ll develop the knowledge you need to start or advance a career in this vital field.
The program requires 15 units of credit, presenting an accelerated path to new opportunities that can be completed in one year. You’ll have flexible, individualized options for building your skills through a variety of engineering and mining security courses. Choose three electives that fit your professional interests and aspirations in fields such as geomechanics, mining health laws, sustainable development, and public health policy.
Should you decide to pursue the Master of Engineering in Mining and Geological Engineering after graduation, or complete both programs concurrently, all 15 units taken in this certificate program can be transferred.
Total units of credit: 15
Learn to design, evaluate, and maintain safe working conditions that protect the lives of mine workers and comply with the regulations that affect industrial spaces. These skills are essential for the on-site safety of employees as well as their long-term health.
The certificate curriculum is updated based on industry input and includes courses on the roles of regulatory agencies and best practices for disaster response and prevention. All classes are accessible at any time making it easy to incorporate your education into your work schedule. The online Graduate Certificate in Mining Occupational Safety and Health requires three foundational courses and three elective courses.
Core courses (7 units required): Mine Health and Safety, Mine Ventilation, and Environmental and Occupational Health
Elective courses (8 units required): Choose three electives.
Prerequisites (1 to 3 units): Students who have not previously completed coursework in calculus, statistics, and strengths and materials may be required to complete prerequisite work. These courses will be part of the student’s study plan and are available online through the Mining Department. They will be counted toward the 15 total required units.
Core Courses (7 units)
Fundamental concepts in the recognition, evaluation, and control of health and safety hazards encountered in mining operations; includes a review of engineering management responsibilities to control accidents, a review of federal regulations and standards affecting the industrial workplace, and instruction regarding the interaction of industrial hygiene, safety, fire protection, and workers’ compensation to control losses resulting from industrial accidents. Graduate-level requirements include a term paper.
Offered in the fall semester only.
Determination of quality and quantity of respirable air in mining operations. Thermodynamics of mine ventilation and design of ventilation systems. Governing regulations and environmental consideration. Computer applications, laboratory work and intensive field trip. Graduate-level requirements include two additional homework assignments, an individual project to complete and additional questions on exams.
Offered in the spring semester only.
Course emphasizes health hazard sources, methods to identify and evaluate them, and framework used to effect hazard control. Students will evaluate public health issues, understand research designs, and identify and evaluate factors important to the development of monitoring programs.
Offered in both the fall and spring semesters.
Elective Courses (8 units)
This course introduces biostatistical methods and applications, and will cover descriptive statistics, probability theory, and a wide variety of inferential statistical techniques that can be used to make practical conclusions about empirical data. Students will also be learning to use a statistical software package (STATA).
Offered in the spring semester only.
This course is for students who wish to learn and engage in modern sustainable development practices with respect to engineering projects that have three areas of impact: economic, environmental, and societal. The course will provide background for an understanding of the complexities and inter-relations of sustainable development issues. The focus will be on the minerals development industry, and the impacts in industrialized and developing nations, communities, and the environment. Graduate-level requirements include project management duties, where graduate students are expected to manage groups of undergraduates in the design of the final term project. Additional graduate projects and assignments will have requirements for type and quantity of work.
Offered in the fall semester only.
Occupational and environmental federal regulatory agencies affect how we work and influence our environment. This course delves into the history of Occupational Safety and Health Agency (OSHA), the Mining Safety and Health Agency (MSHA), and Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the major events that have resulted in contemporary impacts these organizations, and the respective laws, have on our lives, economics, and businesses.
Offered in the spring semester only.
Mitigating mining-related disease risks requires a spectrum of tools ranging from hazard identification and exposure measurement to control validation and measuring employee fitness-for-duty. From the context of real-life mining scenarios and business cases, the course will cover mining-related diseases, industrial hygiene, and occupational medicine approaches for anticipating, recognizing, evaluating, and controlling mining hazards and measuring miner fitness-for-duty; with the primary focus on recognizing and evaluating hazards and managing risk through controls and regulatory compliance. The course will dive deeply into the cause-effect of miner health and diseases while emphasizing the qualitative and quantitative assessment tools to validate controls and mitigate health risks. Techniques will be applied for hazard identification, quantification of risk, and appropriate application of the hierarchy of controls.
Offered in the fall semester only.
Effective and efficient prevention, response, and recovery from emergencies and disasters is a business necessity for every mine operation. Prevention relies on risk management and safety systems built on risk identification, root cause delineation, measurement, and monitoring which are strengthened and optimized by regular evaluation using exercises. Disaster response that mitigates the severity of the actual emergency requires tools and specialized training that help bring calm during chaos with tangible results (e.g., saved lives, saved environment, saved infrastructure, and saved equipment). The infrastructure needed for effective mine disaster response includes components ranging from incident command, miner self-escape, aided escape, and mine rescue. Following mitigation of the most severe aspects of the emergency, the organization begins the process of recovery that returns the mine to a safer operation than before the event. Recovery considers a spectrum of impacts to personnel (physical and psychological trauma), the environment (contamination), infrastructure (damage to ground control, ventilation, and data systems), and equipment (cost and length of time to replace/repair damaged machinery). This course will dive deeply into the history of major mine disasters and resultant federal regulatory responses, best practices in risk management and safety systems, incident command systems including self-escape and mine rescue, and application of business continuity plans to efficiently and effectively return the mine to a state of safe operation.
Offered in the spring semester only.
This course is an overview of significant social, cultural, and behavioral issues related to public health. Major public health problems and the influences of sociocultural issues are analyzed in relation to health behavior. Readings, discussions, films, and class experiences/assignments focus on understanding the social and cultural issues that influence health-related behavior among specific populations in the southwestern US, North America, and internationally.
Offered in both the fall and spring semesters.
Management processes/roles of public health professionals; health service organization; policy issues and resource utilization/control; human resources management; public health trends.
Offered in both the fall and spring semesters.
Course will introduce students to the basic concepts and principles of epidemiology and how these concepts are applicable for their own particular interests and careers in epidemiology related fields.
Offered in the fall semester only.
Overview of the current international mining health laws and practices as a function of evolving disease threats for workers and communities.
Offered in the spring semester only.
Course substitutions or changes in electives are allowed with the approval of the program advisor.
*Contact department for enrollment
