Email Share
Close
E-mail It

NOTE: Recipients' Email Address currently accepts only 5 email addresses separated by commas.

Department of Environmental Health

Student Profiles

Ian Callander

IAN CALLANDER (IAN-CALLANDER.jpg) SM student, Department of Environmental Health

Ian Callander’s career in the Coast Guard began as a fluke. While at Boston Latin High School, Ian wandered into a room with a Coast Guard Academy recruiter. No one in his family had a military or nautical background, but Ian, intrigued by what he heard, was accepted to the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London and graduated with a bachelor of science in management in 2001. “Training at the academy was really aimed at developing leadership,” Ian says. In the seven years since graduation, Ian has held a variety of demanding jobs for the Coast Guard: engineering officer, marine inspector, and assistant chief of the Waterways Safety Branch. Most recently he served as the branch chief of the Sector San Francisco Boarding Team (commonly known as the sea marshals), charged with using Homeland Security guidelines to target high-risk vessels and conduct security enforcement boardings. “So many new missions were thrown at us following September 11,” he says. “I witnessed the limitations of existing safety guidelines.” Ian describes the hazards of boarding an unfamiliar ship or conducting a boarding of large commercial ships from small boats or by helicopter. Ian hopes to improve the conditions for his fellow Coast Guard personnel when he returns as a health and safety officer. He says, “There are only about twenty health and safety officers among forty thousand active-duty Coasties.”

Chiung-yu (Cali) Chang

CHIUNG-YU CHANG (CHIUNG-YU-CHANG.jpg)Master’s student, Department of Environmental Health

Coming from a medical family, Chiung-yu (Cali) Chang comments, “I see occupational safety and health as another form of medicine. People often develop some kind of disability or disease related to their work.” Cali majored in public health at Taipei Medical University, where she became interested in her current field. Until legislation to protect labor was passed, she explains, Taiwan was plagued by severely unsafe working conditions; even now, the country lacks sufficient data to monitor occupational diseases. After graduating from university, Cali worked in a laboratory at the Taiwanese Institute of Occupational Safety and Health on a project assessing the effects of cooking-oil fumes on restaurant workers. Encouraged by her supervisor, who had studied at HSPH, she applied to the master’s program in occupational health in the Department of Environmental Health. Cali is still early on in her program, but she has been struck by the differences between the Taiwanese and American educational approach: “The emphasis here is on your core knowledge rather than your grades.” She describes the students as “competitive in a good way. They are very helpful and make me work harder.” Cali will spend the summer in the lab of her adviser, Professor David Christiani. She plans to apply to the HSPH doctoral program in environmental health.