Meet Our Graduates: Ehsan Hemmativaghef, MSc OEH

Meet Ehsan Hemmativaghef, Master of Sciencee in Occupational and Environmental Hygiene graduate. Ehsan studied Health, Safety and Environment at University of Tehran and worked as Quality, Health, Safety and Environment Supervisor with the multinational company SGS prior to joining SPPH in September 2018.

What motivated you to apply for the OEH program?

UBC is one of the only three universities in Canada which offers a master’s program in Occupational and Environmental Hygiene in English. UBC is also consistently ranked as one of the top 30th universities in the world. The students are offered two options for completion of the program, i.e. a thesis or a co-op project. The co-op is a paid 4-month internship, where the student will be hired as an occupational or environmental hygiene co-op student after an interview process to learn OEH competencies in practice and reinforce what they have learned during the first year. Last but not least, I appreciate the nature and outdoor recreation and here in Vancouver you will be surrounded by pacific coastline and beaches on one side and mountains and ski slopes on the other.

What was your favorite course taken during your degree and why?

It is hard to choose a favorite course as each one is designed to develop knowledge of students in one or more of the core skills in the field of occupational and environmental hygiene. The Principles of Occupational and Environmental Hygiene (SPPH 535) is offered during the first semester and covers the fundamentals of the OEH profession with different assignments on recognition, evaluation and control of hazards such as critical analysis of a TLV documentation, evaluation of exposure assessment methods or obtaining descriptive statistics from exposure data. The Chemical and Biological Hazard Measurement (SPPH 562) is offered in term two and primarily focuses on evaluation of chemical and biological hazards both in theory and in practice. The students will be taken to different worksites and get first hands experience planning, measuring and analysing exposure assessment using relevant equipment. In Ergonomics (SPPH 565) course students learn how to identify, assess and determine controls for ergonomic risks in different office and non-office workstations. Finally, in Capstone project (SPPH 581D) students get to choose an area of interest to conduct research on and utilize and integrate the core OEH competencies learned throughout the program.

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