118: A Conversation with ASSP's 2024 Outstanding Safety Educator

Jill James:

This is the Accidental Safety Pro, brought to you by HSI. This episode was recorded July 22nd, 2024. My name is Jill James, HSI's Chief Safety Officer. Today my guest is Leslie Stockel. Leslie is an associate professor of professional practice at Oklahoma State University in Fire Protection and Safety Engineering Technology. Leslie holds a PhD in technical communication and Rhetoric from Texas Tech University, a Master of Science and Engineering Technology Management, and a Bachelor of Science in Fire Protection and Safety Engineering Technology from Oklahoma State University. Leslie, she asked me not to call her Doctor, is a certified safety professional and has a safety management specialist designation with a board of certified safety professionals. Leslie joins us today from Oklahoma. Welcome to the show.

Leslie Stockel:

Thank you, Jill. What an introduction. I'm so thrilled to be here.

Jill James:

Well you know, my wonderful podcast producer, Emily, is an OSU grad and she found you, so kudos to Emily for bringing someone from her alma mater onto the podcast. So really appreciate that and so thankful that you joined us today.

Leslie Stockel:

Go Pokes.

Jill James:

So tell us the landscape of your professional life. How did this all start for you?

Leslie Stockel:

Well, I've been in safety a long time. It's a long story. I guess the best place to start is at the beginning, my father was a firefighter in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, and that's where I grew up. And we weren't a firefighting family before he joined the fire department, but we certainly were one after. It was such a big part of our life growing up, looking at the calendar to see what days he worked or going to the fire station to visit him when he was on duty. And when I was a teenager, the Oklahoma City Fire Department at the time had a Boy Scout Explorer post group of teenagers who were interested in fire service. And my father was the fire department liaison for that group. And I had two older sisters, and they both were very active in that group. And so it was just sort of a natural, "When you get old enough to the ninth grade, you are going to join the Explorer group." And I did. And then I was always pretty good in math and science in school, and I had a high school teacher, my high school chemistry teacher, Mr. Cable, he said, you should consider a future in engineering. And so he kind of sparked that interest in me in engineering. And so I was thinking about different types of engineering programs, electrical, mechanical, the usual. And then my dad came to me one day and said, "At Oklahoma State University, they have a program for fire and safety engineering." And I was like, "Wow, okay." So this is two worlds of my interest coming together. So we did a couple of campus visits, talked to some people, and then what really sealed the deal for me was I read this article in Omni Magazine, and this is, we're talking 1983. Okay. I read this article that said that health and safety and environmental careers are going to be the next big thing.

Jill James:

Interesting.

Leslie Stockel:

So that was the final bow on the package for me to choose it. The other thing that was interesting about that decision was my father was a firefighter. My mother was a stay-at-home mom who had various other jobs along the way, but there were five kids in our family, and so we were not rich by any means of the imagination. Also, my mother had a lot of health issues, and so we were looking for affordable ways to go to college. My older two sisters actually ended up not going to college in that traditional sense, but it was always sort of given that I would go and I think it was just because, and I'm going to use air quotes, you can't see me, but I was the smart one, in a family dynamic. And so at OSU, at that time, 1980, in the middle '80s, they had a program where if you were in the fire protection and safety engineering technology major, you could live in the campus fire station free of charge in exchange for working as kind of a part paid volunteer firefighter for the City of Stillwater Fire Department. Now, Emily probably knows this because she's been to our beautiful campus, but on the corner of our campus, we have a beautiful old fire station, three stories with a red brick, with window dormers and a hose tower in the back. It's a beautiful building. That was where the School of Fire Protection was. And also the student dormitory and also the City of Stillwater had an active working fire station in this building to serve the campus and surrounding community. So they had this program where you could live there for free only, you just had to work as a part paid volunteer. And so lucky for me, in 1984, they had just opened up space for women. Because prior to 1984, women were not allowed to live in the fire station. They did not have sleeping or showering facilities for women. And so thanks to another woman who was about a year before me, she had come to school and said, "Hey, I want to live in the fire station." And they told her, "Well, you can't." And she said, "Well, title nine." And so they had to renovate some rooms and make space for women. And then she ended up not even going to school there after they made all those renovations. But then that was good for me though, because when I got there, the rooms were all set and it was all ready to go.

Jill James:

You were the first?

Leslie Stockel:

I was not the first. I was the second in between those times. Another woman, she came and she spent a couple of years at school there. She didn't end up graduating, but she was actually the first woman to live there. And then she moved on to do other things. And so I was the second.

Jill James:

Wow. So Leslie, when did the firefighter training come? you're in a program, you've agreed to be part of the fire service on campus, but you also hadn't been a firefighter previously. How did all of that training go down in addition to being a student?

Leslie Stockel:

Sure, sure. We had to report to campus a week before regular classes, and we had to go through a very intensive week-long training for basic essential firefighter skills. Now, I did have some skills because I had been a fire explorer, when I was a fire explorer with the teenagers. We were allowed to respond to large multi alarm fires in support the firefighters in Oklahoma City. And so I had done that for several years. And so I had some basic skills. I could roll a hose, I could fill a self-contained breathing apparatus with air. I could drag equipment. I knew what the basic equipment was. I had never fought fire. They wouldn't let the teenagers do that because it was too dangerous. But I was around it enough. I had a basic understanding, but I had to report to early, and we just went through a very intensive training for one week. It was funny because at the same time, the fraternities and the sororities were doing their rush activities, and they would be out on campus and I would see girls, and back then they were the Laura Ashley dresses with the hair bows, right?

Jill James:

Yes.

Leslie Stockel:

And we were out there in the heat of August of Oklahoma dragging hose, wearing 30 pounds of bunker gear. And it was fun, but it was also pretty tough. So that's how I did that.

Jill James:

Wow. Oh my gosh.

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah. So just to continue that story we found about this program, it all seemed it was a way to pay for room and board. I also got some academic scholarships to help with tuition. So it was pretty, my first two years of college were pretty much very affordable for my family. So that was another reason why that pushed me to that decision. But I did have a last minute cold feet, maybe about a month before school started, because I had never lived away from home before, and I kind of got scared, and I went to my parents and I said, "I don't want to do this." And I said, "Why can't I just live at home and go to community college for two years and then we'll see what it looks like at the end of that." My parents were very smart, and they wouldn't let me do that. My two older sisters had done that, and they ended up not kind of finishing college at that time. They both went on to do other things and very successful later. But my parents kind of thought, "If she doesn't go, she probably won't ever go." And so they wouldn't let me do that.

Jill James:

Thank you, Mom and Dad, right?

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah. And so when August rolled around and we moved up there, I was terrified. I was going to be the only girl. Actually, I was 17. I hadn't had my 18th birthday yet. I was 17. I'm going to be living in this fire station with 20 boys that I don't know. I was just terrified.

Jill James:

I would've been scared too.

Leslie Stockel:

But the funny thing about it was, after two weeks, my parents couldn't get me to come home.

Jill James:

The best. That's every parent's dream, right?

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah.

Jill James:

You drop your kid off at kindergarten and you hope yours isn't the one that's hanging on your leg and screaming. You want them to run in and don't look back, and you're the one left feeling sad, right?

Leslie Stockel:

Right.

Jill James:

So your parents were probably like, "Oh, thank you."

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah. I came home after that first week. because for me, I was so far away from home, but from Oklahoma City to Stillwater is about 75 miles. But for me, I was an eternity away from home. So I went home after that first weekend after training, and I think I went home the next weekend. It was like Labor Day weekend or something. And then after that, I think in October, my mom called me and said, "Hey, when are you coming home again?" Because I was having such a great time. The boys that I lived with, the men, the young men that I lived with, were fantastic. We became a family. I was the little sister and some of those guys now, we're all in our fifties and sixties now, and they are some of my lifelong friends. Lifelong work colleagues, lifelong friends. You just bond in that experience, and it was amazing. So that's how I got there. Originally thinking that I would lean towards the fire protection engineering side of things. But as I got into the program and started learning, started taking classes, I realized I had a real affinity for the people aspect of the business, and that was the industrial safety part of it. At the time we were, our program was very popular with oil and gas and petrochemical companies and manufacturing companies still is. And so I got a couple of internships with a major oil company over the summers. And then once I did those internships, I realized how much I enjoyed just the safety part of the degree, because A, it dealt with people. It was solving problems. It was more holistic. I tell my students now, "It's not fire protection or safety, it's fire protection and safety." I've done fire protection work in every safety job I've ever had, but I just felt that at the time. And to this day, I even think just the whole package of safety really appealed to me. And so that's kind of why I went that way after college.

Jill James:

Well, and the program that you were doing really had an emphasis on broadly prevention activities and reaction activities, which really is the crux of our profession. Obviously, prevention is key, we don't want things to happen. But when they do, as in there's a fire, we need both in our practice. And so it sounds like you found balance in that.

Leslie Stockel:

Right. Well, and even fire protection systems, every job I've ever had, my title had the word safety in it. But inevitably there would be a problem, "Hey, we've got a halon system that we don't know what to do with, our fire water system is inadequate." And then they would look at me because I graduated from Oklahoma State University.

Jill James:

She knows what [inaudible 00:14:20].

Leslie Stockel:

And if I couldn't figure it out, I knew people to call. We have a very fast alumni network of people in all walks of the industry, and I could send out an email right now and have 15 answers in about 15 minutes.

Jill James:

Oh, that's wonderful. So you had your internships in oil and gas. What was that first job after you graduated?

Leslie Stockel:

Well, interestingly that you asked that question. So I did these two internships with a major oil company. Then I graduated in 1989, and the price of oil in the spring of 1989 dropped to about $8 a barrel. And so this company that was very aggressively trying to hire me for full-time employment after my internships said, "Sorry, we don't have any jobs. We're laying people off." And that was one of those big first lessons of when you're in college, you think, "Oh, I'm going to get this job and my life is going to be perfect, and I'm just going to have this steady upward progression of success." And then these things that we can't control kind of set us back, right?

Jill James:

Yep.

Leslie Stockel:

So that was a disappointment. But OSU is always very highly sought after, even from back then to this day. And so I went through the university recruiting processes, and I got a job with a paper manufacturing company, and they also hired many of our students. And so I got a job with them. And so worked in paper mills for the next seven years as a safety engineer, safety supervisor. Heavy, heavy manufacturing.

Jill James:

That's right.

Leslie Stockel:

Heavy union environments. I would say I really cut my teeth on safety in that job. There were very hard days. I had to investigate fatalities. I had to deal with OSU compliance inspections. I had to deal with the difficulties that come from a, let's call it, I'm trying to be diplomatic here, a tense labor management relationship. But at the time I was like, "Oh my gosh, this is so hard. This is so terrible." But now I look back on it and think, "Wow, what an education I got."

Jill James:

Yeah. every possible hazard exists in a paper mill.

Leslie Stockel:

Oh, absolutely. It's basically a chemical plant with a logging operation on one end and a warehouse operation on the other.

Jill James:

And all the industrial hygiene things and the safety things and the fire protection things. Yeah,

Leslie Stockel:

Safety management, everything.

Jill James:

Yeah. Were you wearing a rescue respirator on your hip those days when you're in the plant?

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah, the little acid gas mouthpiece thing. Yeah, we had those.

Jill James:

Yeah. Oh my gosh. When I started my job with OSHA, and the first time that I went into a paper mill and they gave me that, I'm like, "Oh, wow. This is serious. Pay attention to your exits."

Leslie Stockel:

Exactly. Well, one of the biggest things I wasn't really aware of was H2S gas. I knew about it from oil and gas, but I learned very quickly that the Pinewood pulping process generates H2S gas. We had as big H2S gas problems as any oil and gas company did.

Jill James:

Yeah. My home state of Minnesota has plenty of paper mills, and you can smell them and you know what that is.

Leslie Stockel:

We always used to joke and say, "Well, that smells like my paycheck."

Jill James:

That's right. That's right. Oh, man. Okay. So seven years in the pulp and paper industry, what happens next?

Leslie Stockel:

I always wished... That was kind of a regret that I didn't get the opportunity to work in oil and gas, and I was always hoping to get back into that industry. And so an opportunity came along for me to go to work for a pretty major petrochemical company on their chemical side. And so at the time, so this is like 1992, And behavior-based safety was all the rage then. And so we had done some implementations of behavior-based safety, where I worked. And so I was recruited by a company to join their corporate group to lead their behavior-based safety programs. And so I did that. I took the job and I moved up to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. I will say my techs at my paper job. The last paper place I was at was Texas. I spent the longest in East Texas. And then I had this opportunity to move to Philadelphia to work in a corporate headquarters for a big chemical company.

Jill James:

Wow.

Leslie Stockel:

And so it seemed like a good upward step for me for my career, so I decided to take it

Jill James:

Big shift for you to leave the Oklahoma Texas area and go to Pennsylvania.

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah.

Jill James:

Wow.

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah, it was a big step. And it, the job was great. I love the job, but I didn't love living in Philadelphia. And it was like 95% travel, which you think is going to be fun and exciting and glamorous.

Jill James:

Until you do it.

Leslie Stockel:

Until you do it for any period of time. And then you realize it's not. And so I only was in that role for about a year because a couple things happened. A, I was not very happy. I was single. I lived in Philadelphia, but I knew not a soul in Philadelphia because I was traveling all the time. And the company was actually got bought out by another company, and then I didn't get laid off, but the writing was on the wall. It was all coming, and nobody knew who was safe and who wasn't. And I just wasn't happy living there, and I wasn't happy traveling all the time, and I was getting close to 30, and I was just like, "I need to reevaluate my life and what I want to do and where I want to be." And so I started looking for other opportunities.

Jill James:

And what did you find?

Leslie Stockel:

Well, it was, again, funny story. This could be a FedEx commercial. I was just on the... So now we have the internet, right? It's like 1996, and the internet is brand new, and I'm on the internet. I remember I read an article back home in Oklahoma about this labor commissioner who has been blowing the lid off of government corruption and corruption in the labor industry and construction, and she's this firecracker of a person. So I went and looked at their website, and then sure enough, they had this OSHA consultation program, and they had an opening for the director of the OSHA consultation program.

Jill James:

Oh, wow.

Leslie Stockel:

And I thought, well, that sounds like a job that's interesting. And another step up in a progression of a career. And also this lady seems like somebody that... The kind of person that I would like to work for someone who fights for truth and justice and uncovering and eliminating corruption, and it's in my home state.

Jill James:

Bonus.

Leslie Stockel:

I called her office and they're like, "Yeah, but the deadline supplies two days from now." I'm like, "Oh, crap." Because we didn't have the internet instant send things. You still had to fill out applications. You still had to submit paper copies of resumes.

Jill James:

Put the stamp on stuff. Yeah.

Leslie Stockel:

So I called my parents. My parents come through for me again, I called my parents. They go down to the office, pick up all the paperwork, FedEx it to me. I get it. The next day, I fill it out at the FedEx place. I already have my resume ready to go, and then I turn right around and FedEx it back, and it got there in time.

Jill James:

And you got the job.

Leslie Stockel:

And then I got the job. Yeah. So anyway, so that was good. That was my homecoming, you should say. And it's funny because in your life is a journey, right? You never know what's going to happen. I said, "Okay, I'm moving home. I'm moving back to Oklahoma. I'm not going to travel like that anymore, and I'm not ever moving out of Oklahoma again." Famous last words.

Jill James:

Yeah, right. I wonder, how did that work out for you? So I just have to back up. You said the consultation job that you applied for was the director of OSHA Consultation. Is that what you got? Is that-

Leslie Stockel:

Yes.

Jill James:

Oh, wonderful. Okay. How long were you there at The Department of Labor?

Leslie Stockel:

I was there for four years. We had the consultation program, which is, as many people know, is it's a cooperative agreement between states and federal OSHA to provide no-cost, safety and health consultation services for small business. We had a staff of about 30 safety consultants and industrial hygienists, and they did in Oklahoma, but we also had a small public sector enforcement division because in Oklahoma, federal OSHA did not have jurisdiction over public work sites like city, county, public schools, et cetera. And so the state had its own separate law. It was called PIOSH, and so we ran the enforcement program for that as well.

Jill James:

Yeah. Well, having an OSHA job is really an, speaking from my own personal experience, an excellent way to see the landscape of the American workforce. And you get to see lots of different places where human beings work and the conditions in which they work.

Leslie Stockel:

Right. Well, in small businesses especially, the vast majority, especially in Oklahoma, the vast majority of businesses in Oklahoma are small businesses, less than 250 employees. And so these people don't have the resources like these big oil and chemical and manufacturing companies do. And so it was very satisfying when I would hear the story. So I was the director, so that meant I was an administration and leadership. My job was to hire people, fire people, train people, evaluate people, set policy, all this go out. And we were doing this public information campaign. So I went around and made a lot of speeches and with politicians, and my boss, the commissioner of labor was an elected official. And so my job was not a political appointment type job, but I ended up spending a lot of time with her doing those kinds of things to promote the idea of workplace safety. But it was very satisfying when I would hear companies come and just sing the praises of our consultants and all the ways that they helped them. And we did. We had a staff of really good consultants. Oklahoma was fortunate that we have five colleges in our state that have safety degrees of some kind.

Jill James:

Oh my gosh.

Leslie Stockel:

So it's easy to find.

Jill James:

Wow, I didn't know that. Okay.

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah. And so we had some really good folks, and they did some really good work. And it was very satisfying to hear the stories after the VPP program or the Sharp Awards program. That's right. You would hear those stories and it would be very satisfying.

Jill James:

So you thought you were staying in Oklahoma for keeps.

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah.

Jill James:

What derailed you and did it happen to be a [inaudible 00:26:23].

Leslie Stockel:

It was love.

Jill James:

Yeah. Okay. I figured that was coming.

Leslie Stockel:

Love, love. At OSU, I hadn't been home... I think I moved back home in May, and in June I met a young man who was in the Air Force, and he was stationed at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City, and he ended up... We were celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary this September.

Jill James:

Oh, congratulations.

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah.

Jill James:

And so being with someone who's in the service meant you move around a little bit, I suspect.

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah, exactly. So we dated for a couple of years, and then we decided to get married and then had some children. And during that time, he was an officer in the United States Air Force. And so at some point, you're going to get a permanent change of duty station. And so after being at the Labor department for four years, we got assigned to move out to Las Vegas. So I was sad. Leaving the Department of Labor was a very sad moment. It was good, but sad. I loved the people so much, and it was a really bittersweet time to leave, I think. But we have to go, so we moved out there. And then I actually got a job pretty quick with an insurance company just doing general workers' comp risk assessments in a lot of bars in small casinos in Las Vegas. But then 9/11 happened. So 9/11 happened. We were living in Las Vegas. My husband was active duty Air Force. Just life changed for everyone. Everything changed on 9/11. And so I didn't change jobs once while we were out there. I moved over to the water utility looking for, and again, trying not to travel so much. Now I had babies and just the work pace, trying to maintain a work pace with children. And then when you put your kids in daycare, they get sick a lot. They get ear infections and they get respiratory infections.

Jill James:

And somebody's got to be around. And if you have two traveling spouses, it doesn't work.

Leslie Stockel:

Right, exactly. And my husband, we were at war, and so his work pace changed. Well, not during that period of time. He didn't deploy overseas, but just everything changed. And I think after my son got pneumonia the third time, I was like... That was one, again, one of those moments in life when you realize, okay, I have to reevaluate my life and make decisions that are different. And I decided that I was not going to work, and I was going to be a stay-at-home mom and take care of my kids. And so I did that now. I say I do that, but I often joke that being in safety is being in the mafia, they never let you leave.

Jill James:

I've not heard that comparison, but I'm going to go with it.

Leslie Stockel:

They never let you leave. I've tried to leave a couple of times and people just won't. People started calling me saying, "Hey, we hear you're not working. Can you do X or can you teach the class or can you write this manual or can you develop this training?" And so it was a way to bring in some extra money. And so that's when my consulting career was born. And so I started doing some consulting on the side of taking care of my kids, mostly training related, either writing training curriculum or delivering training when it would fit into my schedule. I started speaking at conferences. Then it was definitely a side gig because I was doing it as a way to make extra money while I was a stay-at-home mom. But it was also during that time that I got the idea to become a college professor.

Jill James:

Okay.

Leslie Stockel:

Actually, he wasn't a professor when I was in school, but he was a professor at Oklahoma State that I'd really gotten to know a guy named JD Brown. He was a professor at OSU in the nineties, in two thousands. And when I was at the labor department, he and I served on a couple of committees together, so we kind of got to know each other. And he's like, you should get your master's degree, and then you can teach college classes. And the college schedule very closely mirrors the elementary and secondary education schedule, and that would really work well for your

Jill James:

Family-work-life balance. There we go.

Leslie Stockel:

I said, "Oh, interesting." So I started looking into graduate programs and I found the Masters of Engineering and Technology Management at Oklahoma State. It was an online program, one of the very first online master's degrees. And of course, I love OSU. And that was, it just seemed like it was a perfect fit. And so I started that in 2001, and then it took me about five years. I would only take two classes a semester, and I would only do it in the summer. Not in the summer. I would not take classes in the summer. So I just started plugging away at it. And then after five years I finished it. So while I'd put my kids to bed and they would send me VHS tapes. Yeah, VHS tapes of the lecture.

Jill James:

Oh my gosh.

Leslie Stockel:

After I put my kids to bed, I would watch my lectures and do my homework and do my reading and write my papers. And I did all that at night when the boys were little.

Jill James:

Wow.

Leslie Stockel:

So yeah. So 2005, I graduated with that degree. And about that same time, we moved again, but we moved back to Oklahoma. So that was happy because my husband was in AWACS, which is a special airplane, the radar airplane that the Air Force has, and they're out of Tinker Air Force Base. So all roads always lead back to Tinker when you're in AWACS. So we came back to Oklahoma, and I was still kind of in stay-at-home mom mode, part-time safety consultant mode. When we came back, I even went back to the labor department and worked kind of as a part-time legislative liaison for that same commissioner. I would say if I had to make a list of all the jobs I had and which one was the worst, that was it. I did not like being a legislative liaison. It was horrible going to the legislature and trying to talk to state representatives and senators to get them to fund your department or pass the bill you wanted them to pass. And that was just not a job that I enjoyed or was good at. Yeah.

Jill James:

And you talk about having to sell health and safety quickly and succinctly. You're an educator now. That's a really hard thing to do.

Leslie Stockel:

And I'm a technical educator. I will drown you in details. These guys, they don't want details. You got to make a three-minute elevator pitch, and I couldn't do it. It was awful. I couldn't do it. That job I failed at, most definitely.

Jill James:

Tried and lessons learned.

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah. So I just continued being a part-time safety consultant and full-time mom for about 10 years working just whatever job came my way. But then at some point, OSU called me again, JD called me, and he said, "Hey, we need an adjunct professor to teach one of our classes here. Would you be interested?" And I have my master's now. So I'm like, "Oh, yes, I would love that." So I did. So that was in 2006. I taught my first college class safety management class here at OSU.

Jill James:

Wow, wow.

Leslie Stockel:

I taught it in the evenings, and I loved it. I thought it was great. I had a fantastic time. I learned many, many years later that the students didn't love it.

Jill James:

Oh, no. Who is the brave person that told you that?

Leslie Stockel:

Well, once I started working here full time, I found my old evaluations that they never shared with me.

Jill James:

Oh my gosh.

Leslie Stockel:

Thank god they never shared them with me though, because if I had read those then, I probably never would've taught another college class

Jill James:

Man.

Leslie Stockel:

And now I have some understanding of perspective on undergraduate student evaluations, and so you have to kind of take them with a grain of salt, but I had a fantastic time.

Jill James:

So fast-forward to today. You are a professor in the program. Tell us about what that's like or what the program is today, particularly for people who are listening. You've already dropped that. Oklahoma has five campuses. You are on one of them that create the EHS professionals of tomorrow. What is it like and what's it like for you?

Leslie Stockel:

Well, so Oklahoma State University, we are an RI Research University, which if I was going to speak in athletic equivalence, that's like being a DI football program.

Jill James:

Gotcha.

Leslie Stockel:

We're a very large university. We're a very traditional university, brick and mortar. We have very traditional students. Most of our students come right out of high school. For me, it was kind of a dream. I went back and forth and taught at some other schools over the years, but my desire was always to come back and teach at OSU. Once I got into this idea that I could teach college, if you had asked me that when I graduated from college, I would've said, "Oh, no." But once I kind of grew into it, I loved it. And so my day, I usually teach three to four classes a semester. I range anywhere from teaching basic safety, like intro to safety and safety management, so I can process safety, chemical process safety, risk control. This semester coming up, I'm teaching our introduction, kind of our intro class for freshmen, fire protection and safety hazard recognition. And then also I'm teaching an electrical safety course, and then I'm teaching... So in the last couple of years, we've launched an online program to reach out to those more non-traditional students, so I'm teaching an online introductory course, but I've also taught ergonomics. I've taught, we have a senior research project capstone class. I've taught that I kind of just teach whatever they need me to teach. Probably the only class I probably have no business teaching is fire dynamics, because that's pretty heavy on the technical stuff.

Jill James:

Right, right, right. And when we were talking before the recording, you were telling me that the program that you teach is accredited with ABET. So for people who aren't familiar with what that means and what the important leverage that is, can you explain that to the audience? I think it's just so fascinating.

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah. So ABET, it's the American or the Accreditation board for Engineering Technology programs. And so this is just a third party accreditation service that comes in and makes sure that to be an engineering and technology degree plan. We are teaching students at a very high level, and we are teaching them all the things that they need to be a practicing engineer or engineering technologist. We get evaluated every four years on our curriculum. They send a team in and they look at our learning objectives, our learning outcomes, and we have to kind of prove it with statistics. So we have to track these things over each cycle, and we have to make sure that we're teaching the right subjects and the right topics within each subject. And then we're also making sure that students can demonstrate the outcomes that they are learning. They have what they call the A through K outcomes, which are things like the student can calculate problems or solve problems through science and technology and calculation. There's also an ethics component. So we have to teach ethics to our students in addition to all kind of the technology, the technical things that we teach them, such as dropped objects and rigging calculations along with fluid mechanics and water pressure loss calculations and industrial hygiene calculations, we do all of that. But the ABET, that group is sort of a third party validator to make sure that we are doing the things that we say that we do.

Jill James:

And it's a big deal for someone who is an engineer to say that they came from an institution that's ABET accredited. That's a big deal.

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah, correct. In order to sit for a professional engineering license exam, you have to have graduated from an ABET-accredited school.

Jill James:

Yeah.

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah.

Jill James:

So it is a big deal. How many people are in your program every year about students?

Leslie Stockel:

Right now, we currently have about 150 students. We've ranged, think our max we ever have was like 400, and we were pretty full. We had kind of a COVID dip like everybody else. Right now we're sitting at about 150.

Jill James:

Wow, that's fantastic. That's fantastic.

Leslie Stockel:

We got like 50 something incoming freshmen this year, so that's encouraging. And then, we've grown over the years. I think when I was in school, there were 15 in my freshman class, and I graduated with five. And then over the years, we kind of have ebbed and flowed and grown and shrank. And so right now we're at about 150. That's fantastic. And we have seven full-time faculty members.

Jill James:

And you, among those faculty members, was just named outstanding safety educator of 2024 with ASSP.

Leslie Stockel:

I was.

Jill James:

How does that happen? you are waking up one morning and your phone rings and they say, "Hey, guess what?" That's fantastic.

Leslie Stockel:

Well, there's a nomination process, and I'm thrilled to say that I had two students who were officers of our ASSP student chapter here, of which I am the faculty advisor. They submitted an application on my behalf, including letters of endorsement from our department head, and I think maybe the president of our local chapter, I can't remember. But anyway, they were so sweet. These two students were so sweet and kind, and they submitted a very beautiful, beautiful nomination. It made me cry. Sometimes we only hear the bad stuff. There are students that don't care for me. I'm not everybody's cup of tea. I think sometimes I'm a little... I'm tough. I have high expectations and I expect... Because what we do is serious, and I have passion for it, and I understand having worked in the industry how serious it is, so I would say I am a tough instructor, but I'm also a loving instructor. I love all my students, but I do have high expectations for them. So anyway, these two students, they submitted an application on my behalf and wrote a beautiful nomination letter. And yeah, I got picked.

Jill James:

That's so great.

Leslie Stockel:

So when Jim, I think his name was Jim, the president of ASSP, when he called me to tell me I did start, I started crying so much, and my husband was like, "What's wrong? What's wrong?" And I couldn't even talk.

Jill James:

Congratulations. Congratulations.

Leslie Stockel:

It's a big honor. And it's just sweet. I really do love my students and I'm very passionate about helping them learn, but some days we struggle and some days we have challenges. And so for them to take the time out of their busy semester to submit that on my behalf was really, really special to me.

Jill James:

And what an honor to come from the students. Yeah. So will you be at the national conference? Is there an award ceremony or how does that work?

Leslie Stockel:

Yes. The first question, I will be at the conference because, prior to even learning about this, I had been accepted to be a speaker. So I am speaking at the conference. But yeah, I'll be there. And there is some kind of an awards presentation, I think on Tuesday evening. Years ago, ASSP would, at the big opening sessions, they would bring out all the award recipients. I don't know that they do that anymore. They think they stopped doing it during COVID, and then I don't think they've resumed it. But I'll be around. We have a booth and I'll be wandering around the conference center.

Jill James:

Well, I hope to see you there. I'll be there as well.

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah, I'll be there. I'll come by and see you, for sure.

Jill James:

Sure. Wonderful. And same, I want to come to your university's booth. That'll be great. In the introduction, Leslie, I mentioned that you also have your PhD, which sounds like it's something new-ish for you. And you were mentioning your PhD research to me when we had our pre-chat. I'd love for you to share a little bit about that. And also, when did you finish your PhD?

Leslie Stockel:

Okay, yeah, sure. So my PhD is in technical communication and rhetoric from Texas Tech University, and I just actually finished it last summer in 2023. I started it in 2019 before the pandemic. If you're a full-time faculty member at a major university, there is a hierarchy. And I was not required to get a PhD for the job because my job title is professor of practice, which means my years of experience are what's valuable for the job. But after I finished my master's, 15 years prior to that, I wanted to continue on for a PhD, and I just never did. And so after being on faculty for a couple of years, and a couple of my colleagues had finished up their PhDs, and I'm just like, "You know what? I'm just going to do it because it'll take me five years and I'll be 56 years old when I graduate. But you know what? I'm going to be 56 years old either with a PhD or without a PhD and a lot of regret, so I'm just going to do it."

Jill James:

Fabulous.

Leslie Stockel:

I found this program at Texas Tech, and again, I needed it to be online because of the life schedule they did. And so I started it before the pandemic, but we were doing Zoom classes and Zoom meetings and all that before the pandemic ever started. And then when the pandemic happened, we just kept going. And so nose to the grindstone, that's what I did during the pandemic. I got a PhD. It's four years.

Jill James:

That's fantastic. And how interesting that your master's degree was online before online was a thing. Your PhD was online before every single person was doing everything online. Yeah. That's fabulous.

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah, it is interesting how that worked out.

Jill James:

And you weren't getting VHS tapes mailed to you this time?

Leslie Stockel:

No, no. Yeah, I sat in front of a Zoom window every three nights a week for three hours listening and talking and doing discussions and things and writing papers and whatnot.

Jill James:

Wow.

Leslie Stockel:

So my degree is in technical communication and rhetoric, which is basically an English degree. But I chose it for a very specific purpose because one thing I realized trying to teach young engineers is that they struggle with writing and communicating their ideas. And it's great to be a very smart technical person, but if you can't communicate and get those ideas across, then you're... What am I trying to say? Your technical proficiency will go unnoticed, right?

Jill James:

Right.

Leslie Stockel:

So that's why I chose it. And then it was a very interesting degree. There were a lot of people a, in that program doing a lot of different things. It was very diverse. We had a lady in my cohort, she actually did her PhD research on using emoji for neurodivergents who are non-verbal.

Jill James:

Wow.

Leslie Stockel:

And I thought at first when she goes, "Oh, I'm doing my dissertation on emoji," I had to really control the eye roll. But when she started talking about it, and I was like, "Oh my gosh," it was so interesting. And then she actually just published a book on it. So we were very diverse, but I got some good advice from the dean of engineering here at OSU. When I started it, he said, "Don't go into it with a preconceived notion of what you want to do your dissertation on," because that's where people get into problems because they're trying to make something fit and it doesn't fit,

Jill James:

And it consumes all of your thought process. Like, "I'm learning this. How can I modulate it for that?"

Leslie Stockel:

Fighting with your committee to do that thing that you had a preconceived notion about. So I did. I was like, "I have no idea what I'm going to do my dissertation on," when I started. And then as he said, he goes, "It will unfold to you, I promise you." And so I was in the program, and I actually took a class on risk communication because I thought, "Oh, this'll be easy. I do this all the time." Well, it wasn't easy. And I did learn a lot. And I met this professor there who was kind of an expert in risk communication, and he and I kind of struck up a work relationship, an academic type relationship. And then he ended up being my chair of my committee, and then he really guided me. And it all worked out because in the end, I was able to do my research on a safety related topic, which is what I really wanted to do in the first place. I just didn't commit to it at first. It was kind of that idea that I had in my head, but I didn't commit to it because the dean here told me not to. So my topic was I wanted to study basically. So technical communication, you're looking at documents, you're looking at technical documents and how they're used to communicate things, right?

Jill James:

Got it.

Leslie Stockel:

And I thought, well, I want to do something with incident investigation documents, because over my career, I have investigated many events. I have filled out many incident investigation forms. I have reviewed many final investigation reports, and I think there's something there that we can talk about. And my chair agreed. So we did that. And then I also, of course, what's hot right now is this idea of the SIF significant incident and fatality. So I wanted to marry those two things together, which is what I did. So my research process was I looked at a series of incident investigation reports from three different sources. One of them OSHA fatality investigations, which I got through FOIA from OSHA. The second data group was incident investigations that have been curated on NIOSH's fatal accident page. They're called FACE reports.

Jill James:

FACE.

Leslie Stockel:

And then the third set was through our alumni network, I was able to work a partnership with a pretty large energy sector corporation who allowed me access to their incident investigation database on the condition that I keep them anonymous.

Jill James:

Wow.

Leslie Stockel:

And so I did that. So I had three different and unique sets of data sets. And so I got all these fatal investigation reports, and I started doing a research method called content Analysis where you go through and you read the language. You don't just read the text and count the numbers of things that happen. You actually look at the language that's used and the meaning that's derived from that language. And so that's what I did. And so yeah, it worked out pretty well actually. I came up with some pretty interesting findings.

Jill James:

Yeah, please. Could you share some of the findings? Obviously this is your entire research project. What are some key things that you'd like to share about your research? It's so fascinating.

Leslie Stockel:

Sure. So the first thing was that everyone's talking about SIF, significant incident and fatality. And then when I started doing my searching... The first thing you do in research is you look at what else has been written and studied about it. There's been a lot, but it's all... There was a wide variety of definitions of first of all, what is an incident and serious incident and fatality, a lot of variety in the definition of just that term. And then also the individual precursors. We talk about SIF precursors, which are those things that are happening that lead to an SIF. And there was not even consistent categorization of SIF precursors across the previous studies. And there was not real clear definitions of what those things were. So that was kind of my first task was to come up with a set of pretty clear definitions of what they were. And then my second question was... Well, three questions, really. The second question was, "Are we even identifying these precursors in the accident investigations themselves?" And the third question was, "When we recommend corrective actions, are we addressing either the root causes or the SIF precursors?" So those were my research questions. And so what I found was there was not a consistent sort of, let's call it a taxonomy of SIF precursor categories with really clear definitions. So I kind of created one. The second thing is SIF precursors identified in the investigative data, and the answer was no. I don't think it was less than 1% of all of the reports are reviewed, called out an SIF precursor by name never happened. Right?

Jill James:

I'm not surprised.

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah. And then the third question was, "Are the corrective actions being recommended correlated to either the SIF precursors or the causes that are identified in the report?" And the answer there is no as well.

Jill James:

Oh my gosh.

Leslie Stockel:

So yeah. So I came up with this kind of categorization of SIF precursors, and we can spend three hours talking about this. So basically it boiled down to three different main categories. And that was kind of the things, what you might call the things that were happening on the ground at the time of the incident, like the pre-incident conditions. And I even called it... Hang on a second, I've got my report open here, and I'm just looking at the words. So I've got the type of operation going on. Was it maintenance, normal operations, construction or emergency response actions? And even within the definitions of maintenance and normal operations, what is maintenance and what is normal operations?

Jill James:

That's right. That's right.

Leslie Stockel:

Because people assume that normal operations is production and maintenance is fixing things. But what if you're a maintenance worker and your everyday task is to fix things? That's your normal operations, right?

Jill James:

Mm-hmm.

Leslie Stockel:

So we have to look at it to the individual task and not just the overall operation of the organization. And a lot of the cases I looked at somehow, and I didn't pre-select anything by industry, it was a random generation. Working on vehicles, working on trucks, working on equipment. Maybe you're an automotive shop. Well, that's not maintenance work. That is normal operations because your normal operations is to do that work.

Jill James:

To do that.

Leslie Stockel:

The next thing was just the definitions of routine versus non-routine work. And again, we group that. I think the general view is to group it by the operation of the organization, but it really goes down to the individual performing the task. Because again, I use the maintenance example. If I'm an electrician, my routine work may be non-routine to the organization, pulling pumps, pulling motor control centers, rewiring things, fixing things that are broken. That's my routine work, not the other way around. And so this idea that non-routine work lends itself more readily to SIF precursors according to my data is not true. The prevailing operation was routine work when it was routine to the worker. Right?

Jill James:

Yep. Makes sense.

Leslie Stockel:

And so then the other things were like worker experience. And in the data set that I ended up with, actually experienced workers had higher frequency of fatal events than inexperienced workers. So that's interesting.

Jill James:

I've mentioned before and on this podcast that I was an investigator for OSHA for just about 12 years. And so my anecdotal without doing a study, and I think back to all the fatalities and serious injuries I investigated, it was almost always people who were older workers, experienced workers, and nearly all toward the end of their career,

Leslie Stockel:

I didn't factor in... Just I kind of grouped them by were they considered like a journeyman or were they considered someone who was experienced or was it somebody new? And that's all again... One of the things that when you do content analysis is you have to be careful not to let your own biases influence the data. And as an experienced safety professional and an experienced accident investigator, it was very difficult for me when reading these reports not to say, "Oh, well, they got the wrong cause here." I had to categorize the cause that was listed, right? But in my data, I found that doing normal operations, doing routine tasks by experienced workers had much higher rates of significant incident and fatalities than the other. And then we got into things like what I called the triggers. The triggers of SIF were a safety procedure breakdown, abnormal conditions, unexpected changes in the work, having the worker in the line of fire of some kind of trajectory of moving objects, process instability, equipment failure, design or installation failure, and then safety control failure. Now, this one category, which I called the initiator or the trigger, is what most people think of when they think of SIF pre-cursor. So that wasn't a whole lot new, but the problem is these things had not, up until last year, not been defined. So I went through and tried to define them and, no surprises, the most frequent thing was safety procedure breakdown, followed by line of fire incidents. And so because of that, I'm actually, I'm doing a research grant right now to study this line of fire event, and we can talk more about that as we get to what's the what next section. But then the other thing was management system failures, safety management system failures and then overall management failures, like culture failures. Those are typically not viewed as SIF precursors, but according to my research, they are.

Jill James:

So Leslie, your research is so fascinating and so many things that can be learned from it. How can or will the wider EHS profession be able to use your findings?

Leslie Stockel:

Well, when you write a dissertation, it goes into the Great dissertation database in the sky. It is available for people to read. And actually, someone did read it and post it on LinkedIn not too long ago, which terrified me.

Jill James:

Wow.

Leslie Stockel:

But generally the people that he did a pretty good analysis of it, and then the people that responded to it were all generally positive. So that was a big phew moment. But I am working on, I probably need to split it into three different publications because it's a dissertation, it's very long just talking about the SIF precursor topics and then just where do we go from here kind of stuff. I think one of the biggest findings of the whole thing was that the things that people identify in incident investigations don't always translate into the right corrective actions. And that corrective actions, there tends to be a default between new procedures and new training. I can't tell you the number of cases where this accident happened, and there's no mention of a procedure that either was bad or wasn't followed or didn't exist. And then in the corrective action they say, "Write a new procedure or train employees." And meanwhile, there was a procedure and they did follow it and the people were trained. And so that is something... I think there needs to be a heavy emphasis placed on doing better investigations. I think all... It's one of those basic safety functions that any state professional does, but a lot of people do them that haven't been trained, that don't have an understanding of root cause analysis, that don't have an understanding of even this sort of thing, it's just kind of a paperwork exercise. I think as a profession, I think we need to revisit that and get back to it, and then also communicating those findings. The other big finding was in almost 90% of the cases I reviewed, there was no effort made at any kind of pre-task hazard ID or risk assessment before the task took place, which then resulted in a person losing their life.

Jill James:

That's right. Oh my gosh.

Leslie Stockel:

I'm also working on a research. I got a grant from MMEC Insurance Company to do follow-up on this line of fire. And so I have a colleague of mine, a professor here, and she's doing a lot of work with virtual reality. And so we have a virtual reality studio just across the hall, and we're going to create some virtual reality scenarios based on some of these reports from my original study. And then we're going to do some research on put in a virtual reality environment, how do people respond to these hazard events, SIF events. So we got a grant to do that. So we're going to be doing that probably this next year.

Jill James:

Yeah. What a time to be a student at OSU to be able to learn from these things that you've done in your dissertation. Are you speaking about some of this research at ASSP when you go to the conference?

Leslie Stockel:

Actually, I'm not. So I did speak about it a couple of years ago when I was still kind of in the proposal phase, but I applied to speak this year, but I was not selected for that topic. I was selected for... I kind of have a side gig on nonverbal communication on how we can use the psychology of nonverbal communication to be better safety professionals. And so I submitted two topics this year, and that's the topic that got selected. So I'm going to be talking about, basically my title is what everybody says about safety, emphasis on the Body. And so it's a... When my last industry job, before I came to OSU full time, I worked at Electric Utility Company and just life-changing events, life-changing moments. I really got into this idea of learning about 60 to 90% of our communication is through our nonverbal actions. And I sort of just got interested in that. And I started studying, and I actually became a certified body language trainer and consultant through an organization. At the time, they were out of Portland, but now they're in Austin. It's called the Science of people. And so I do training, little extra training sessions that I can do with different groups on, especially for someone possibly who doesn't come across human interface very easily, like for introverts or people with neurodivergent issues. How can you learn how to connect with people when it doesn't come naturally to you? And there are ways to do it.

Jill James:

This is a whole nother podcast.

Leslie Stockel:

Yeah, it really is. Actually. Yes. I would love to do it if you would love to.

Jill James:

Oh, I would, I would. How fabulous.

Leslie Stockel:

How fabulous. I've spoken a few conferences about it, and that's what I got selected for ASSP.

Jill James:

Okay. Well, I hope we're not speaking at the same time so that I can come and listen to you.

Leslie Stockel:

Oh yeah. Same.

Jill James:

Fabulous. Well, Leslie, before we leave today, is there anything you'd like to leave the podcast audience with?

Leslie Stockel:

Well, we said we were going to talk about OSU, and I think we kind of went down a rabbit hole there, but I just want to let everybody know that our program, we've just launched our online program where you can earn a bachelor's in fire protection and safety engineering technology in a, I'm going to call it 98% online format. You still have to take chemistry and physics in person, but you can take that at your local college. And so for those people who are out there looking for an online program, because I know sometimes people like to debate, "Well, what's better online or in person?" And I will say, in person's always better, but sometimes in person's not possible. For example, when I was working on my PhD, there's no way I could have uprooted my life and moved to Lubbock, Texas to complete a PhD. And so when your choice is nothing or online, then you want online and you want quality online. And so I think we're doing that. We're providing the same quality of education that you get in person here at OSU in an online format. And we're doing a lot with virtual reality labs. And so I would just want to let people know, "Hey, here's a possibility for you." And if you want more information, you can find us on our website or reach out to me and we'd be glad to talk to you about it.

Jill James:

Well, and we can put a link in the show notes as well.

Leslie Stockel:

Oh, thank you. We appreciate that.

Jill James:

You're welcome. Oh my gosh. Leslie, thank you so much for your generous time today and for all the contributions that you've made to our profession. Thank you so much.

Leslie Stockel:

Well, thank you for having me on. This was fun, I really enjoyed it, and I look forward to seeing you guys in person at the conference.

Jill James:

Same, same. And thank you all for spending your time listening today, and more importantly, thank you for your contribution toward the common good. Me, your employees, and those we influence know that our profession cares deeply about human well-being, which is at the core of our practice. If you aren't subscribed and want to hear past and future episodes, you can subscribe in iTunes, the Apple Podcast app, or any other podcast player that you'd like. Or if you prefer, read the transcript and listen at hsi.com. We'd love it if you could leave a rating and review it on iTunes, it really helps us connect the show with more and more health and safety professionals like Leslie and I. Special thanks to Emily Gould, an OSU grad, and our podcast producer. Until next time, thanks for listening.