Message From The President – July 2020
Greetings ASSP Members and Friends,
I sincerely hope this message finds you in good health. By now, the current pandemic has evolved to a point where many, if not most of us, now know of someone who has been personally afflicted with COVID-19. The health outcomes of this infection vary significantly, driven – it seems – by age and by how the virus potentially exploits personal co-morbidities. There’s so much left for scientists and researchers to learn about SARS-CoV-2. The anxieties created by this pandemic leave us exhausted and ready for solutions, wherever we think we can find them. Ultimately, science is the key. And the only thing that surpasses science is better science. As safety and health professionals, our mission is to stay on that high road to always protecting others – in the workplace, in the home, in public places.
ASSP has been providing ongoing technical and managerial guidance to its members throughout this pandemic. Their online offerings and the conversion of the ASSP PDC to a virtual platform keeps us informed and stimulates new thinking about how to cope with the pandemic.
I want to give a special shout-out to the Tuscaloosa-West Alabama Section for their engagement of members with monthly virtual meetings this summer. Plans are underway for an Alabama Chapter online Zoom meeting during the month of August, so please stay tuned for more information on that.
At the outset, I mentioned “good health”. By that, I mean health in every way – including your physical, psychological and social state of well being. COVID-19 has forced us to look at workplace safety and health as a function of what happens with our workers both in and outside of the workplace. With that in mind, I’ll also mention an upcoming event, the Total Worker Health 2020 Symposium , at the University of Alabama on September 1, 2020 at the Bryant Conference Center in Tuscaloosa. Your ASSP Alabama Chapter will be representing at the event, and attendance is available both onsite and online.
Thank you for all that you do to protect people. Please let me know how we may be of help.
Best of health to you all – in every way.
Matt Hollub, Alabama Chapter President
Message from the President May 2020
Greetings ASSP friends and colleagues!
I hope this message finds you doing well and adjusting to your new normal.
Under normal circumstances, last month we would have held our special Chapter Awards luncheon to present service awards, honor our Safety Professional of the Year (SPY) recipients and celebrate our outstanding ASSP Chapter scholarship recipients.
Our plan moving forward is to hold that Chapter Awards luncheon later in the year when we can all safely join together.
With that said, we feel it best to not delay the announcements of our SPY award and scholarship recipients.
Beginning with our scholarships, we recognize these outstanding students for their achievements and desire to pursue careers in the field of occupational health and safety. Each recipient will be receiving a $ 1000 ASSP Chapter scholarship toward the fulfillment of their educations. Our recipients are:
From the University of Alabama Birmingham, Tyler Young from the Advanced Safety Engineering Masters Program, and Erin Lindsey from the School of Public Health.
From Jacksonville State University, Aidan Giddy.
From Auburn University School of Applied Engineering, Connor Lusk.
Our Safety Professional of the Year award recognizes outstanding contributions of individuals whose service to our ASSP Alabama Chapter and their profession. This year, we are delighted to announce two SPY award winners for 2020.
In the Construction category, the SPY goes to Shawn Ankerich! Shawn has served our Chapter as Chair of Programming.
In the General Industry/Academia category, the SPY goes to Dr. Jerry Davis. Dr. Davis has been a fixture in the safety community in Alabama for many years.
We congratulate our scholarship and SPY award winners for 2020 and look forward to honoring these fine folks in person at our upcoming awards luncheon, time and location to be announced. Please look for a separate announcement with more information about our award recipients for 2020.
To our Chapter members, stay the course as leaders for our profession!
Take care out there.
Matt Hollub, President
ASSP Alabama Chapter
Message From The President – April 2020
Dear Fellow Chapter Members and Friends,
About a week ahead of our scheduled March 20th Chapter meeting, the Executive Board decided it best that we cancel that event. Our feeling at that time was that the risk of sharing COVID-19 was probably not that significant. All the same, we cancelled that meeting out of “an abundance of caution”. Good move. Not much more than two weeks later, Jefferson County became one of the viral “hot spots” in Alabama. Now, a little more than three weeks later, we’re in shelter-in-place mode statewide. What’s next? That pretty much depends on how well we can discipline ourselves and educate others to take these current precautions a good deal more seriously.
Message From The President – March 2020
Dear ASSP Colleagues,
I hope this message finds you doing well. And while we’re on the subject of doing well, I guess this would be a good time to talk about staying well and preparing for an outward spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus. As safety and health professionals, people will understandably be looking to us for guidance on how to reduce risks and deal with local communicable infections. Linked here are two very fine articles released by ASSP on how to prepare for what may come next. We are seeing respiratory protection products, particularly N-95 and 100 filtering facepiece units in critically short supply. Clearly, the direct and ripple effects of COVID-19 will continue to teach us lessons on how to better prepare for these situations in the future. For now, however, I’d suggest you get a look at both of these articles for some good guidance on creating contingency plans and training your people on how to respond to what’s happening now.
Message From The President – February 2020
Dear ASSP Colleagues,
I want to express my thanks to all who helped make our Chapter PDC a successful one this year. Our hosts at AGC provided us with a great meeting space that enabled us to bring our attendees and exhibitors together in one big room. We had a record number of exhibitors this year who added value to our PDC with their on-hand services and expertise.