After the catastrophic Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, investigations pointed out numerous instances of operator error, as well as cost-cutting decisions by the rig’s owners. But as the authors of a presidential commission noted in their comprehensive report, “Though it is tempting to single out one crucial misstep or point the finger at one bad actor as the cause of the Deepwater Horizon explosion, any such explanation provides a dangerously incomplete picture of what happened — encouraging the very kind of complacency that led to the accident in the first place.”

Most accidents, even those that involve loss of life, are not investigated by presidential commissions. But all over the country, and the world, safety professionals are charged with finding and eliminating risks in the workplace. The longer they spend on these problems, the more these professionals realize that there must be a better path than simply adding more warnings, protective equipment and training courses.

Alumni and students in the Advanced Safety Engineering and Management program at UAB say they learned just such a path in this innovative, all-online master’s degree program. The ASEM program is the only 100% online master’s degree program in engineering with a focus on improving occupational safety by applying prevention through design.