Over the past 20 years, the USS Midway Museum has not only become a symbolic icon for San Diego, but it has evolved into an important community asset. Whether conducting its annual Memorial Day ceremony, hosting “Top Gun” movie night, or providing the Navy SEALs a platform for critical training, the museum is now part of the fabric of the city.
Continuing this two-decade tradition, Midway recently entered into a partnership with the University of California at San Diego’s (UCSD) Division of Extended Studies to incorporate an added sense of authenticity and realism to a safety training course.
Through UCSD’s extended studies program, the Office of Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) is now able to offer training workshops on board Midway. The advantage of hosting classes on Midway is that it offers students enrolled in OSHA’s Training Institute Education Center, the opportunity to learn on a full-scale working model of the kinds of ships they’ll be working on in and around in the shipyards.
“Hosting classes on the Midway provides a better visual of the concepts we’re talking about,” said Barton Deem, one the course’s maritime instructors. “When we talk about a confined space, we can go to a confined space to see it for ourselves. When we talk about lockout and tagout, we can go to the power panel and look at the breakers aboard the ship so the students know exactly what it means. The Midway is an excellent field lab for our course material.”
This is another excellent example of how Midway is more than just a classroom, but a complete hands-on training facility.
“Midway is an outstanding educational facility that not only supports school children, but also working professionals in the maritime industry,” said Len Santiago, Midway’s chief engineer. “By partnering with the UCSD’s extended studies staff, we are helping these critical professionals in many different ways.”
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