Environmental Health and Safety

Safety Shoutout

This month's Safety Shoutout goes to Nicole McFarland! Nicole McFarland is the Forensic Laboratory Services Manager for FIU's Global Forensic and Justice Center. In 2020, Nicole McFarland was tasked with improving laboratory safety at the Global Forensic and Justice Center (GFJC). Just two years prior, the standalone non-profit organization was absorbed to become a part of FIU. One of the many challenges in this joint venture was to merge, adapt, and modify policies and procedures to align with the university while also complying with the previously held licenses and contracts. In this new position, one of Nicole’s first actions was to merge existing laboratory protocols to align with the university’s safety program while also adhering to CDC guidelines for COVID. This included DEA and ATF requirements, license, and renewals, which were only previously held by the non-profit. One of the first actions for increased safety and compliance was relocating the Drug and Explosives Locker into the new lab space. Nicole oversaw construction, compliance preparation, and inspection to approve usage. Since the laboratory is used to train analysis of actual controlled substances, Nicole also developed and implemented a Naloxone program in 2021 for the dozen GFJC employees, four tenant lab staff members, and more than a hundred students, interns, and researchers. Nicole developed training for the GFJC employees with access to the chemistry, biology, latent print, and imaging (lasers) laboratories. This program has four specific-need training courses with a standalone core training module with laboratory hazard awareness, hazard communication and fire safety covered. The annual courses ensure laboratory staff are up to date on the safety measures specific to their areas and can focus on the areas in their day-to-day work and research. The GFJC lab is also used by agencies and partner companies for research, and test and development. This includes the Department of Homeland Security and Thermo Fisher Scientific. Nicole is also responsible for these visitors’ compliance with safety standards of the university, DEA, and ATF licenses. This includes implementing Logistics Processes and Training for all incoming and outgoing shipments, ensuring the GFJC logistics team's safe handling of sensitive packages. Nicole manages three different physical lab spaces for their safety adherence. In 2021, Nicole novated the FIU incident reporting protocol. As of this entry, no incidents have been reported in large part to Nicole’s efforts to streamline and improve safety measures of every person who is badged into the laboratory spaces. To learn more about Nicole McFarland and the GFJC, click the "Nicole McFarland & GFJC" button. To nominate someone for a Safety Shoutout, click the "Nominate" button.