Wayne State University's college of engineering is among 18 colleges that have been awarded Consultation Education and Training grants by Michigan's Consumer & Industry Services (CIS) Bureau of Safety and Regulation as part of a $1 million, year-long study to promote workplace safety and health.

Wayne State's department of civil and environmental engineering will establish and implement a 12-month safety-training program using the CD-ROM based Safe2Work training package. The courses are interactive and allow the worker to labor while being tested using a simulation of the environment of the software they are studying.

Mumtaz Usmen, a professor of civil and environmental engineering, will head up Wayne State's research efforts. The department of civil and environmental engineering will receive $85,000 from CIS. It will not only be tasked with setting up the training program, but also assessing the impact of the training and determining if the objectives are being met in terms of workplace safety.

Wayne State will initially train 1,500 workers within the scope of the grant, Usmen said.

Ultimately the number of workers to be trained in the state is 80,000. Wayne State's department of civil and environmental engineering is in the process of securing additional funding, so the scope of the training can be expanded to the entire Safe2 Work program in the state.

Wayne State University is a premier institution of higher education offering more than 350 academic programs through 14 schools and colleges to more than 31,000 students in metropolitan Detroit.