Power Plant safety intern, Linda Lee, has spent the majority of her summer working on a big project that could help keep employees at Prairie State safer for years to come.
Lee has been working on an emergency action plan in the event of a chemical spill to provide guidelines of how to approach and handle a spill in a safe manner. To do so, she has gathered information on where all of the chemicals on campus are stored and used, what ingredients the chemicals are made up of and how much the campus keeps on hand. Through her work, she could potentially make Prairie State even safer long after her internship ends.
While Lee has helped Prairie State be a safer place to work, Prairie State has helped Lee get a better idea of what she wants to do after she completes her education at Murray State.
“This was my first internship, so I didn’t have any experience when I got here.” Lee said. “This internship has taught me how the entire safety system works on an industrial scale. When I started at Prairie State, I didn’t know which direction I wanted to go in, but I’ve learned that industrial hygiene is an interesting field to work in.”
Through Lee’s experiences at PSGC, she’s learned a lot about safety and industrial hygiene. She’s helped on incident investigations and followed engineers and safety contractors to learn what they do each day and how her chosen career path affects them. Through her shadowing experiences, she’s learned how what a person learns during school can be applied on the job.
After her internship at PSGC ends, she will return to Murray State for her final semester of school. After graduation she is considering earning her master’s degree before entering the workforce.
“This has been a great experience. Prairie State has given me a lot of growth opportunities,” she said. “At other occupational safety and health internships, we really don’t have a chance to see how everything works. You might get to see a little bit of a few aspects of occupational safety. Here, I’ve gotten to experience a little bit of everything.”