Safety Management Systems of Mechanical Engineering Laboratories / Carlos, Christian Caragay.

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The study aimed to determine how faculty, students and school related factors affect the level of safety management systems of mechanical engineering laboratories during Academic Year 2011-2012. The respondents were the faculty and students if Bataan Peninsula State University-College of Engineering and Architecture. Specifically, the faculty related factors comprised the age, sex, educational qualification, eligibility, field of specialization, employment status, years of teaching experience, length of service and relevant seminars and training attended. The student related factors concentrated on age, sex and year level. The school related factors on the other hand, focused on financial management, budget allocation, faculty and staff development, curriculum development, student development, and facilities development. The levels of safety management systems of mechanical engineering laboratories were expressed in terms of policy, plan, implementation and operation, action for improvement. Policy included the management review. While the plan integrated the safety leadership, hazard identification, risk assessment/management, monitoring regulatory compliance and strategic planning. On the other hand, implementation and operation consisted of training and competence, awareness, employee involvement, emergency preparedness and response, and maintenance. Action for improvement involved the performance measurement, monitoring, and incident management system. The data collected through the questionnaire was tallied, tabulated and distributed in accordance with the variables stated in the problems. The data gathered was analyzed with the use of the following tools: Frequency count and percentage was employed to describe the profile of the faculty- respondents in terms of age, sex, educational qualification, eligibility, field of specialization, employment status, years of teaching experience, and relevant seminars and training attended. The mean was used to describe the level of assessment of faculty towards the safety management systems of engineering laboratory. Correlation analysis was used to determine the relationship of student and school related factors and the level of safety management system. Pearson correlation (r) was computed for the independent and dependent variables. Pearson Correlation (r) measures the degree to which two quantitative variables are related. Correlation coefficient ranges from -1 to +1 wherein zero indicates no relationship, -1 implies prefect negative or inverse relationship and +1 signifies perfect positive or direct relationship. It was concluded that the null hypothesis that there is no significant relationship between the faculty, student and school related factors and the level of safety management systems of mechanical engineering laboratories is rejected. Further, the built-in statistical package in MS Excel 2007 and the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS 20 for Windows) program were used to facilitate the processing and interpretation of data. SPSS readily provides the significance or probability levels for the statistical tests; hence these are just compared with 0.05 level which was set in study as the accepted level of significance. If the significance values are equal or lower than 0.05, then the statistical values are significant; hence, the null hypothesis are rejected. In view of the foregoing the following specific recommendations are offered: The College should establish and implement integrated and comprehensive safety management systems that systematically and continuously identify, reduce, and manage safety risks at its laboratory rooms. In addition, the college officials must provide effective leadership on establish appropriate goals for safety. Those individuals must demonstrate their commitment to safety by articulating a clear message in the importance of safety management systems and matching that message both with the policies being adopted and the actions to be taken. To provide a relevant engineering education and prepare students for entry into the workforce it is imperative that our equipment and laboratories keep pace with these advancing technologies. Likewise, the College must have sufficient resources to provide adequate laboratory facilities to the students, maintain state if the art technology, achieve a reasonable student to faculty ratio for effective education, and retain the best of the faculty to provide a high-quality engineering education. The hiring for new faculty, growth in student enrollment, and increased student research opportunities has made the need for quality space essential. It is imperative that the College have the resources to maintain and upgrade classroom and laboratory infrastructure in order to provide a quality educational experience for the students. In addition to a top quality faculty, which currently exists in the College, students must have faculty committed to innovation in engineering education, adequate facilities, a competitive diverse peer group, a good learning environment, and state of the art equipment in order to obtain a quality technical education. Technologically current equipment is critical to the success of any mechanical engineering program. The current teaching and mechanical engineering laboratories are in need of equipment, in the form of repairs, updates, and upgrades. Mechanical Engineering is a very equipment intensive field of study and in order to meet the needs of the students, the college should identify a portion of the tuition fee to be used for upgrading and maintaining the laboratories. The College should provide strategic plan that will create clear structure and support mechanisms to demonstrate that engineering graduates have world-class capabilities. The College must pioneer and adopt transformations to engineering education based on solid research findings. The College will be designed to be intrinsically interdisciplinary, and will become another example of the leadership in engineering education in the country. The university should establish company linkages to add funding, sponsorship and research centers to support the safety management systems. Benefits to working with industry will build closer collaboration with firms that will give the opportunity to focus on real-world problems concerning safety and broaden the students' experience. Companies play a direct role in the training and education of engineering students in acquiring expertise and advice and enhancing their competitive performance. In addition to a top quality faculty, high quality students and highly sought after graduates are hallmark of a top tier university. A top tier engineering program will bring even more recognition both nationally and internationally to this institution. The strongest faculty candidates always ask about the quality of the students, and a diverse population of top students is critical in the quest to continue to improve the overall excellence of the College. Improved retention, graduation rates and success will accrue. An investment such as this in our students, coupled with the Faculty Development Program, will result in the culture of excellence in College of Engineering and Architecture mandated by Vision and Mission of the University.