University of Alabama to Offer Online Industrial Safety Degree

The University of Alabama at Birmingham’s engineering school is preparing to launch an online master’s program that will teach safety professionals how to design industrial systems with the potential for accidents in mind.

The school says the new master’s of engineering in Advanced Safety Engineering and Management will be the only degree of its kind in the country when it debuts this fall.

UAB says it has received queries from about 200 people from as far as the Middle East.

The degree program has been in the works for about a year. Martha Bidez, an engineering professor who designed the program, calls it part of a national trend toward using engineering to prevent workplace injuries, environmental disasters and other problems.