“If the young students whom Tim introduced are any indication, the profession will be in good hands, and we of retirement age can begin to let go with a clear conscience.” 3 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org FROM THE PLSO CHAIR Out to pasture? Whoa! Not quite yet John atcher, PLS; 2015 State Chair It was a close call. In a program to slim down and become more effi cient and profi table (and retain a more youthful demographic?), my former employer off ered a one-time Voluntary Retirement Program (VRP) with an extra-generous severance and a one-month decision window. Certain writings being on the wall for me, I applied for the VRP and was accepted. My “retirement” became eff ective November 4, and the next two weeks gave me a taste of the green grass of the retirement pasture. Nice. Th en I had lunch with an old party chief friend whom I used to supervise and who now owns his own thriving surveying company. He snapped me right up, and I didn’t even have to prepare a resume. Good bye pasture, hello again comps, calcs and chords. Maybe in a couple more years… Eventually, soon even, some young geomatrician will have to step into my shoes. We’ve all been bombarded lately with the statistics on the aging of our profession and the need to interest young people in fi lling the void being created as our numbers dwindle by attrition. Th at issue (can we call it a crisis yet?) is one of several that your PLSO is taking seriously by devising and funding programs for outreach. It is the reason the “Scholarship Auction” was renamed the “Education and Outreach Auction.” It is the reason outreach is one of the four chief strategic directions in PLSO’s Strategic Plan. It is one of the motivating factors that keeps Tim Kent and his cadre of adjunct Geomatics instructors passionate about the education programs at Clark College and Oregon Institute of Technology. Pioneer Chapter and the Lower Columbia Chapter of LSAW have a tradition, established several years ago, of alternately hosting a joint December meeting. Th e meeting is predominately social in nature—better halves are invited, entertainment is booked, and door prizes are given out. It is a chance to take pause before the busy holiday season and network with other surveyors from both sides of the river. Th is year and last, Tim Kent had arranged for the students in the Clark College Surveying Program to attend and be introduced. I really hope student attendance becomes an integral part of this tradition. If the young students whom Tim introduced are any indication, the profession will be in good hands, and we of retirement age can begin to let go with a clear conscience. So attracting and mentoring young surveyors is one of the goals and benefi ts of a robust outreach program. Providing scholarships is and always has been a very important tool in pursuit of that goal. In 2014, PLSO awarded $14,500 in scholarships. Th e dollars came from the earnings of our scholarship fund, which has now swelled to approximately $260,000. Th e PLSO board gets it that members may want their auction dollars to go exclusively toward scholarships. For that reason, auction- goers can now choose where their dollars go—either toward the scholarship fund or toward the other outreach programs. PLSO’s outreach committee is called the Education Goals & Action Committee, or EGAC (as my dear old mother used to say, “Th at’s enough to gag a maggot.”). EGAC focuses on programs such as TrigStar, job fairs, publicity for PLSO, updating the PLSO brochure, website enhancements and erecting the PLSO booth at conferences. We still have work to do, and always will. Members who give their time and talent to be PLSO leaders on all levels know it’s not always easy to fi ll shoes when it’s time to move on. We have to do that work, though, in order to traverse into the future. Th ings will change dramatically as the next generation takes the helm of the profession and its professional societies from us “honored citizens.” Th ey will be good changes. Here’s wishing all of you a happy and prosperous new year. Do some good work, make some money, have some fun. Use the hand rail (that’s my way of saying be safe). Th e best advice I ever got was from a one-hundred-year-old woman, sharp as a tack, at a wedding in Bozeman, Mont., in 1979. She simply said, “Keep interested.” Th at’s good advice for everybody. ◉
PLSO Issue 1 2015 Jan_Feb
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