Professional Development Activities

Critical to CSCRS’s approach is broadening the set of institutions and practitioners that understand Safe Systems principles and methods, and have the tools and knowledge needed to improve road safety.

Here are examples of CSCRS professional development activities:

Events and Conferences

  • CSCRS will hold the Safe Systems Summit: Redefining Transportation Safety, Sept. 13-14, 2018, in Durham, N.C. The event offers a learning environment for a diverse group of cross-sector experts to explore the underlying systems driving the national rise in traffic deaths, share findings from innovative new research, and develop insights into reducing transportation injuries and fatalities by utilizing both Safe Systems and systems thinking principles, tools, and techniques.
  • In January 2018, CSCRS co-hosted the inaugural Safety Sunday @ TRB event with the UTK Southeastern Transportation Center in conjunction with the 2018 TRB Annual Meeting. This successful networking event provided an opportunity for a wide variety of attendees to connect and discuss a variety of topics together in the same room. 
  • CSCRS researchers make regular appearances presenting at traffic safety-related professional conferences. To see a sampling of CSCRS presentations at just one event, the 2018 TRB Annual Meeting, visit here.

Lecture Series

  • Florida Atlantic University launched a Safe Streets Lecture Series in March 2018 with a talk by Peter Norton, Professor of History at the University of Virginia, on “The Invention of the Motor Age Street.” (View a video of the lecture here.)
  • The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Coffee and Conversation, a 10-part lecture series started in January 2018, is a biweekly dialogue featuring experts in public health, transportation, planning, engineering, and ethics who explore the many interrelated components of our complex transportation system.
  • The University of Tennessee, Knoxville Transportation Speaker Series features a variety presentations by UTK experts engaged in transportation research. 
  • The University of California, Berkeley ’s Weekly Transportation Safety Seminar series highlights the various research projects being conducted at UCB and beyond. The seminars provide a platform for both researchers and students to share ongoing and completed work, as well as get feedback on a work in progress.

Other Activities

CSCRS researchers are a part of a working group that meets regularly to explore defining what a systems approach to road safety will look like and how best to convey the concepts and practices to a broad audience. This Core Learning Community Systems National Peer Learning Team is one of five funded through a program by the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which is promoting the use of systems approaches to preventing injuries. The Systems NPLT was established by the North Carolina Division of Public Health and has started its work by creating a planning group working on how to roll out a systems approach to injury prevention. In addition to CSCRS representatives, members of the international group include professionals from highway safety, planning and public health disciplines, as well as regulatory agencies.

Looking Ahead

CSCRS continues to develop new professional development programs; the following activities will be launched in 2018:

  • UCB will produce short educational videos about road safety that highlight the research work conducted by CSCRS scholars and researchers at UCB.
  • UNC will launch road safety workshops for North Carolina land-use planners that will inform them about how their work connects to road safety and demonstrate how they can incorporate road safety into the planning processes.
  • UNC will create a CSCRS web-based repository of systems thinking resources to house systems science materials.
  • UNC will offer travel scholarships for up to 10 public health leaders to attend the CSCRS Safe Systems Summit.
  • UNC will hold a systems-thinking workshop with community members/pedestrians regularly exposed to pedestrian travel risks.
  • UTK will incorporate new developments in connected and automated vehicles into its Traffic Signal Academy, which offers practice-oriented workshops on improving signal operations.
  • UTK will develop and teach a short course on safety in the Tennessee Transportation Assistance Program (TTAP), part of a nationwide Local Technical Assistance Program financed jointly by the Federal Highway Administration, Tennessee Department of Transportation, and UTK.

 

 

For more information, please contact Caroline Mozingo, CSCRS Education & Outreach Program Manager.