Indiana’s Everyday Safety Hero award honors two Purdue safety champions

The Indiana Department of Labor’s Everyday Safety Hero award honors Indiana employees who have demonstrated outstanding commitment to workplace safety and health excellence in their specific workplace. The nominee is not obligated to be a safety or health professional; instead, this award acknowledges the significant contributions, active involvement and positive influence that a front-line employee demonstrates to achieve excellence in workplace safety and health in Indiana. Two Boilermakers were among this year’s winners: Kendra Erk, materials engineering professor, and Shane Haselby, Building Services senior manager.

Erk has been the faculty chair of the School of Materials Engineering Safety Committee since 2018 and has developed and implemented a multitude of successful safety initiatives. In an efficient effort to gather feedback from personnel across campus, she instituted Materials Engineering’s first all-school safety survey and town hall event in 2019. Since 2019 she has continued to take giant leaps in promoting safety practices in both informal and formal ways for staff and students. From partnering with Purdue Environmental Health and Safety (EHS) to host a seminar on the life cycle of hazardous materials to creating the bimonthly Materials Engineering Safety & Equipment Newsletter, Erk has worked diligently to encourage a plethora of safety initiatives and educate about best practices.

Haselby has played an integral part in transforming the safety culture within Purdue’s custodial team. Through strong leadership, he has cultivated a working environment in which staff are more comfortable sharing issues and more collaborative in troubleshooting to find solutions. Haselby has continued to lead efforts to develop EHS’ safety management system while taking the time to meet one-on-one with employees and department leaders to gather feedback and gain insight into how best to be a safety leader in order to effectively address employee concerns. These efforts have resulted in the Building Services department reducing its recordable injury rate by over 50% from 2021-23.

EHS is part of the Administrative Operations organization. The organization supports the university through safe, reliable and transformative services. Recognizing and advancing safety efforts is just one of the many ways the organization helps power Purdue.