USU scholars shine at national industrial hygiene conference – Cache Valley Daily

You can thank the COVID pandemic for making industrial hygiene, the science of protecting workers’ health and safety, more important than ever.

The American Industrial Hygiene Association awarded national academic scholarships to four Utah State University scholars at a national conference in Phoenix last month.

The USU scholarship winners were 2022 graduate Denali Sanders, and current Aggies Jacob Byington, Spencer Fairbanks and Abigail Pickett.

Sanders is currently pursuing a master’s degree in occupational ergonomics at Colorado State University. Fairbanks is an intern with Sturm, Ruger and Company at the firearms company’s facility in Prescott, Arizona.

Pickett recently completed an internship with Wisconsin-based Sentry Insurance Company and Byington is an industrial hygiene intern at SSR Mining in Battle Mountain, Nevada. 

Carl Farley, who is a senior lecturer in USU’s Department of Biology and also directs the school’s industrial hygiene degree program, said the four scholarship winners were competing almost entirely with students from graduate programs.

He said USU’s undergraduate industrial hygiene program is one of only four that are nationally accredited.