: The Industrial Hygiene and program (IH) at West Virginia University educates students at the Masters level to help meet the need for occupational health professionals with strong skills in industrial hygiene, ergonomics, and safety, with an emphasis on engineering controls. The IH program is administered through the Industrial and Management Systems Engineering Department (IMSE) in the College of Engineering and Mineral Resources (CEMR). The goal of the program is to train practitioners who understand research but also are willing and able to solve real-world problems using recognition of hazards, representative sampling, and a strong grounding in engineering controls, especially in ventilation and noise control but also in ergonomics and safety. The emphasis on control of hazards is unusual and therefore increasingly needed. A secondary goal of the program is to provide introductory IH, safety, and ergonomics education to undergraduate engineers and to Masters and doctoral students in other programs at WVU, including Mining Engineering, Occupational Medicine, Industrial and Labor Relations, Safety Management, Environmental Management, and the Occupational Safety Doctoral Program. The IH Masters degree requires the completion of a minimum of 41 semester hours, including either a 3-hour problem report or a 6-hour thesis, with a cumulative grade point average of at least 3.0. All students must complete designated courses in IH, air sampling, noise, ventilation, safety, epidemiology, ergonomics, toxicology, and environmental science. All required course work is taught in the College of Engineering and Mineral Resources and the School of Medicine, but students may take elective courses in other colleges of the university. Emphasis is placed on the development of written and oral communication skills through projects, papers, and presentations and on industrial knowledge through workplace tours, work in the Occupational Medicine clinic, and industry-based problem reports and research theses. The IH Program is ABET-accredited as an Applied Science program in IH.
