Cultivating a university community focused on each individual’s well-being

STEM Safety Day at the University of Utah is an opportunity for all of campus to come together and refocus on workplace safety. It’s free, open to students, faculty and staff and is designed to fit around everyone’s schedules.

The event was first hosted solely by the Environmental Health & Safety office (EHS) in 2019. It then went on hiatus until 2022 when it was resurrected in the College of Science, with EHS's support. It has grown from there, becoming a campus wide event starting with the 2024 iteration and now includes eight on-campus partners and multiple off-campus sponsors. 

In 2026, there will be seminars, trainings and other sessions designed to help people better understand and mitigate the health and safety hazards associated with working in STEM fields at the U. People in non-STEM fields will also find programming applicable to their areas of work and are more than welcome to join. Sessions will be offered in one- to two-hour blocks throughout the day, so attendees can easily fit the courses in around their schedules. David Thomas, LAS Director of Safety, said that this flexibility makes STEM Safety Day at the U unique—no one is locked into an entire day of classes.

“We were very intentional about creating this in a piecemeal fashion where you can come when you have a break in the day, you can sign up for sessions that work with your schedule and that are important to you—with a very low barrier to entry,” Thomas said.

2026 STEM Safety Day will take place Friday, October 2, 2026, at the Cleone Peterson Eccles Alumni House. Breakfast and lunch will be provided.

If you want to join, register for 2026 STEM Safety Day.

A breadth of opportunities to match your work

2026 STEM Safety Day offers a wide range of learning opportunities, and attendees can choose sessions that match their specific types of work.

There will be a Mental Health Crisis De-Escalation course as well as a Psychological Safety session meant to cultivate a climate of safety, improvement and wellbeing. Some sessions are more hands-on, such as laser safety training, basic first aid, off-road driving and vehicle inspection and fire extinguisher training. Other seminars are designed to keep students, faculty and staff up to date on the latest regulatory requirements, such as the Demystifying Laser and NIR EHS Permit Requirements on Campus seminar. 

“There's always a core set of things that we try to bring back that we think people generally want to see or that are going to be applicable to a wide array of folks at the U,” said Thomas. “But we also try to vary it up.” This year there are updates on the suicide prevention task force and their progress. There is also a new session on the biosafety regulations that are coming down from the National Institutes of Health and an opportunity to provide feedback on them. The opioid overdose seminar is also new this year—complete with Narcan training and free take-home kits. 

Want to know what else you can learn? Check out the entire 2026 STEM Safety Day Program.

“There's no finger-pointing going on at these. This is not, ‘You should be doing this or why haven't you been doing this?’” Thomas said. “This is just an opportunity to learn and grow in the simplest and easiest possible way that we can provide.”

University and partner investment

STEM Safety Day began in the College of Science in the Environmental Health and Safety Office in 2019, but it was such a massive lift for a single office that they only did it once. Then in 2022, the College of Science started it up again in partnership with EHS. Since then, it has grown to include many other units on campus, with some corporate off-campus sponsors helping to make the barrier to entry financially low.

“It's everybody wanting everybody else to be a little safer and have a good workplace to be at,” Thomas said. “I want to give everybody a shout out because it takes a village to make something like this happen.”

Over the last two years, the conference has averaged between about 350 and 400 people. As it expands, attendance is likely to grow too. “Oh, I'd love to see it grow.” Thomas excitedly said. “With the sheer size of campus, I think it's totally reasonable to have the attendance be double or even triple that.”

Safety is a holistic pursuit

Thomas says that at the end of the day, it's not the faculty, staff or students alone who make campus safe—it’s all of us together.“Safety is very much a holistic pursuit,” he said. “Yes, there are specific hazards [such as] working with hazardous chemicals or radiation or whatever it is, but safety is also being able to come to work and know that you are in a place where the people around you are interested in your well-being. They have your best interests at heart. You have a supportive community.”

2026 STEM Safety Day provides an opportunity to take a step toward building that supportive community, and Thomas hopes you will help make the university community the safest place it can be for working and learning. “Just come and learn,” he said. “Try to figure out what you need to know to be a little bit safer the next day you come to work.”

---

STEM Safety Day is co-hosted by the College of Science, Spencer Fox Eccles School of Medicine, John and Marcia Price College of Engineering, College of Pharmacy, College of Social and Behavioral Sciences, College of Health, Facilities and Environmental Health and Safety.

Special thanks to corporate sponsors Fisher Scientific, Grainger and Industrial Supply.