Re: Student Use of Radiation

["Sue M. Dupre" <DUPRE%PUCC.bitnet@vmd.cso.uiuc.edu>]

In reply to William's Bradford's request for information about students using
radiation sources:

At Princeton, undergraduate students are either en masse using sources of radi-
ation as part of a course (lab technique classes for the molecular biologists
or materials study classes for physicists, engineers, chemists, etc.) or they
are individually doing work for their junior papers or senior theses in the
laboratories of faculty members.

In the first case, my office provides a training session as part of the course-
work for the class in question.  This training is usually designed in consulta-
tion with the faculty member and is often considerably shorter than the train-
ing that regular radiation workers must go through.  There are approximately 5
courses a year (offered in various departments) for which we provide this
special student training.  Of course, there are the makeup sessions for the
students who thought they would be allowed to do the lab work even though they
managed to avoid the original session.

Any student who is going to use sources of radiation within a faculty member's
lab must go through the full radiation safety training class provided to all
radiation workers even if they have previously been through the special student
training described above.

We have a lot of students in the labs, mostly in the Molecular Biology Dept, so
we've had lots of time to observe the cocky undergraduate/humble graduate
phenomenon.  You can take a Princeton senior, put her/him in the lab and notice
how the student believes that she or he can do no wrong - they're a senior
after all, just put in 4 years at PRINCETON, about to graduate and
become God's gift to the world.  When that same student a few months later has
become a graduate student, the lowliest person in the whole lab, they're usual-
ly a lot more receptive to the possibility of their own failings and more
receptive to our training.  We usually find more problems in the labs in those
months in the winter and early spring when the seniors are out in force.

Please contact me at 609/258-6252 or through dupre@princeton.edu if you need
further information about our training for students.

Sue Dupre/Health Physicist/Princeton University