ISHN began offering CEU credits via our CE Center a couple years ago. I asked Stephanie Poirier, BNP Media’s Continuing Education Business Development Manager, to explain to our readers what that means and what we offer. She manages the CE Center and courses ISHN publishes. The following is our discussion:

Q: Who is the CE Center for?

A: The Industrial Safety and Hygiene Continuing Education Center is the place for professionals in a variety of industries to go to earn free CEUs or continuing education units to expand their industry experience and knowledge. We offer courses that are geared towards professionals involved in safety and health professions within their respective industries. And for those who have not checked it out yet, please visit ce.ishsn.com to browse our free library of courses and register for a free CE Center account and you can start earning your credits today. 

Q: Can you talk to me a little bit about the history of the CE center, why BNP started it and how it has evolved over time? 

A: Sure, the ISHN CE Center launched in May of 2020 in response to the expressed need and want from professionals in the industrial safety and hygiene industry to earn CEUs. It was a perfect time to launch our CE Center, especially with the boom in online learning. BNP Media’s brand ISHN, that is known and trusted within the industry, launched this learning management system and strives to continually add new quality content that's relevant to industry professionals. 

Q: What organizations are we accredited through?

A: We are continually looking for and adding new applicable accreditations to our course offerings. And we currently offer courses that are accredited through IACET, which stands for the International Association for Continuing Education and Training. And our courses can also be self-reported to the American Board of Industrial Hygiene/Board for Global EHS Credentialing, or ABIH/BGC, as they now go by. Many also qualify for recertification points through the Board of Certified Safety Professionals, BSCP. So we offer a lot of different credit types in order to allow professionals to utilize the CEUs that they earn in whatever organization that they may need to report back to. 

Q: How does the CE Center compare to some of the other resources out there for CEUs? 

A: What sets the Industrial Safety and Hygiene Continuing Education Center apart is that it's free for anyone to create an account and all of our course offerings are free as well. We offer a variety of courses and credit types that are all applicable to a wide range of individuals in various professions and provide certificates upon course completion that are stored within the individual's CE Center credit tracker. The credit tracker is an easy place for users to go to track their credit earning progress. We offer live and on demand webinar courses as well as editorial article courses that are available on demand. A lot of our competitors, you may notice, have courses that are hundreds of dollars and what makes ours really, really handy and nice for people out there is that it's free. We want you to be able to earn your credits, and continue on learning within your profession and industry to better yourself. 

Q: Do you have any tips or best practices for users? 

A: My biggest tip is that many professionals need to earn a specific number of credits before the end of the calendar year. So my advice is to not procrastinate. Visit the CE Center frequently to see what new course offerings we have that may be of interest to you. We offer live webinars, which often can fill the requirement for live learning that some associations require for recertification. 

Q: Do you have any user feedback that you can share to demonstrate some of the benefits of the city center? 

A: Sure, here are some comments from CE Center users that were collected through our optional course surveys that are available upon completion of all courses. So the vast majority of users say that they would recommend our courses to their colleagues and that the content is current and relevant. Some quotes from users are:

• this is a very good site with great content
• The course was worth my time
• amazing training, good resource and great info and speakers
• I enjoyed each moment and the Q&A 
• I got more than what I expected

You can earn CEU credits via our most recent webinar on NFPA 70E, which is available on demand until November 2023. View it here: https://www.ishn.com/events/2940-nfpa-70e-the-right-stuff

Visit ce.ishn.com to register to earn free CEUs from our course catalog.