Middlebury College
PA-12: Workplace Health and Safety

We are using the year 2011 to monitor yearly changes in workplace health and safety to provide a five-year comparison of change over time. During that period safety numbers have steadily improved, i.e., the number of injuries and illness per employee has shown a decrease in each year over that period of time up to 2016. The Office of Environmental Health and Safety currently does not use a baseline year. Data for both years were collected in the same manner, as part of the annual OSHA report.

Middlebury College has a strong commitment to workplace health and safety. The Office of Environmental Health & Safety provides advice, guidance and resources to the Middlebury community on occupational safety and risk management. Education and training are key parts of our safety program. We use a comprehensive training matrix to ensure we meet both regulatory requirements and our own internal standards. Besides regulatory and job-specific safety training, we offer training on many topics, including safe driver training, ergonomics, fire prevention, and free on-site CPR/AED certification training for staff, faculty and students.

Part of Middlebury’s strong commitment to a safe working environment is emergency preparedness. Middlebury has established an Emergency Core Team, comprised of senior administrators. This team is responsible for emergency planning, preparedness and recovery. This core team has established an Emergency Planning and Preparedness Team, which provides support and resources during an actual emergency. Middlebury has a state-licensed first responder team made up of staff and student emergency medical technicians who are able to provide emergency medical services to both the campus and the community

The responsibility for Middlebury's safety culture is shared, and requires active commitment from all staff, faculty and students. We envision continuous improvements to our workplace health and safety program that take it well beyond regulatory requirements.

The employee count numbers are straight from our annual OSHA filings which ask for the “average annual number of employees” which includes more than our regular full-time and part-time employees that make up the FTE numbers including work study students who constitute a significant number over and above our FTE counts

Middlebury also employs some employees who work seasonally or temporarily for dining services, retail operations, facilities services, Rikert Nordic Ski Center, and the Snowbowl Ski Area who also do not show up in the FTE counts.

Most of the injuries reported occur in facilities and dining. We are working on hazard prevention training and techniques with these groups to focus on injury prevention.