Chapman University announced the appointment of Charles Sohaskey, Ph.D., to the position of Lab Safety Administrator for the University’s Rinker Health Science Campus in Irvine, CA, effective June 13, 2016. Dr. Sohaskey is the principal Environmental Health and Safety professional responsible for supporting the success of laboratory safety management at the two-year-old Rinker campus, which houses Chapman’s School of Pharmacy in addition to graduate programs for physical therapy, communication sciences and disorders, and a pending physician’s assistant studies program.
Reporting to the director of risk management, Dr. Sohaskey will serve in three key areas of responsibility. First, as an environment health and safety officer, his duties involve assured compliance with all matters of health and safety at the Rinker campus, with an emphasis on laboratory safety for both the research and teaching labs. In addition, he will serve as a resource to faculty, staff and researchers in an effort to support their key objectives as they relate to research activities.
Dr. Charles Sohaskey, Lab Safety Administrator
Dr. Sohaskey also will serve as the Chapman University Biosafety Officer and will support the activities of the Institutional Biosafety Committee and the Science Safety Committee. He will also function as the key representative on the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committee as well as the Institutional Review Board. More about Chapman’s Environmental Health and Safety can be found
here.
“It is exciting to be offered this opportunity at Chapman University, allowing me to contribute to the success of Chapman’s new and vibrant growth in the health sciences, while providing direction and support across both campus locations,” said Dr. Sohaskey. “Chapman has a reputation as a dynamic place for academic excellence. The current growth of programs at the Rinker Health Science campus is very exciting and I look forward to being part of the upcoming changes, evolution, design and development of health and safety programs to support this growth.”
Dr. Sohaskey earned his Ph.D. in microbiology at the University of Texas, Austin, following his B.S degree in microbiology from the University of North Texas, Denton. He engaged as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas Health Science Center, San Antonio Department of Microbiology and in Molecular Genetics at UCI. Since 1998, Dr. Sohaskey has worked as a health science specialist and principal investigator engaged in tuberculous research with the U.S. Veterans Administration (VA) at the Veterans Administration Long Beach Healthcare System in Long Beach, CA.
During his tenure at the VA, his responsibilities including operating and maintaining a biosafety level 3 laboratory (the second highest category in levels of biosafety precautions) where he gained a solid understanding of issues dealing with research safety for a high security and safety lab.
In the past five years, Chapman University has made great strides in becoming a research-focused institution by growing its research funding more than 42 percent, with expenditures from research continuing to grow at an average of five to10 percent each year. Further, efforts to continue to support research include the
Office of Research and Sponsored Programs
; as well as a formalized
Office of Undergraduate Research and Creative Activity
to promote student-faculty mentored and collaborative research, scholarship and creative activities.
This appointment follows in the steps of other major announcements from Chapman in the past few years dedicated to growth in science—most recently filling a newly created position of vice president for research and the groundbreaking for a
new science and technology building
set to open in 2018. In 2014, Chapman opened the new campus in Irvine now known as the Harry and Diane Rinker Health Science campus, which houses graduate-level programs for the Crean College of Health and Behavioral Sciences in addition to Chapman’s School of Pharmacy—the first in Orange County. Chapman also has in the works the development of a Physician’s Assistant Studies program.
Consistently ranked among the top universities in the West, Chapman University attracts highly qualified students from around the globe. Its programs are designed to encourage leadership in innovation, creativity and collaboration, and are increasingly recognized for providing an extraordinary educational experience. The university excels in the sciences and humanities, business and economics, educational studies, film and media arts, performing arts, and law. Student enrollment in graduate and undergraduate programs is approaching 8,000 and Chapman University alumni are found throughout the world. Visit us at
www.chapman.edu
.
Follow us on Facebook at:
Chapman University Facebook
On Twitter and Instagram at:
@ChapmanU
On YouTube at:
Chapman University YouTube Channel
###
