PLSO March April 2017

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Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon |
Internships
Let me just put it out there; the goal of the
Education and Outreach Committee is to ensure
that every single student who wants a summer
internship gets one. We are looking at 100% as our
minimum baseline for success with no excuses and
no exceptions. Not just this year, but every year. We
as a professional organization are not going to fail
even a single student, because this is a goal we can
achieve for two reasons. First, the land surveying and
geomatics students are so important to the future
of our profession that we dare not fail. And second,
the dynamics of internships is such a positive for
everyone involved that I cannot foresee any instance
where the schools, the employers, or the students
won’t benefit from them. Let me explain.
As a business owner, the summer is when I have the
greatest demand for surveying work and that demand
tends to taper off when the academic year begins. I can
hire a student intern for the peak demand period and I
don’t have to lay someone off when the demand begins
to ebb. I know there are several small business owners
who believe that internships are only for very large
companies, but I believe small companies are often a
much better fit.
As a small company, field crews and office personnel
need to develop a diverse skill set with each person
having to possess competency in a wide range of tasks.
Small companies also tend to take a wider variety of
job types so that a field crew in a small shop can do an
elevation and LOMA on Monday, a boundary survey
on Tuesday, a timber staking job on Wednesday,
construction layout on Thursday and topography
on Friday. This wide and diverse selection of tasks is
ideal for student interns because it exposes them to a
greater range of experiences and therefore it allows the
students to bring back more relevant knowledge to the
classroom, hopefully making their course work more
meaningful.
For a student, an internship provides two incredible
advantages. Course work which, in their minds is merely
theoretical does not have the relevance to be retained
in long termmemory. However, if the students summer
experiences reinforce what they have been learning
in school, then the supposedly theoretical becomes
something tangible. I have often heard that the
classroom provides about half the knowledge required
to do a job and that work experience provides the rest.
A meaningful internship coupled with classroom work
has been shown to be vitally important. Resultantly,
there is no reason that the students cannot leave school
with two thirds to three quarters of the knowledge
required for the working world.
The second advantage is that the student will be
paid a much higher wage as a surveyor than any
other summer job they might otherwise obtain. If the
students do well financially during the summer, there
is a much better chance that they will not drop out of
school based on financial hardship.
The advantages for the surveying schools is greater
student retention because of fewer dropouts due
to finances. There will also be a smaller chance
that students will drop out due to a lack of interest
because they will have first-hand knowledge that their
coursework is important and that the relevancy of
classroom skills is readily apparent while working.
Because the whole notion of internships is such a
win-win-win scenario, it was fairly easy to get buy-in
with OIT, Clark College, Umpqua Community College,
Renton Community College and the PLSO. The PLSO
will maintain a web based internship bulletin board at
under the job and internship tab where
students seeking internships and employers seeking
interns can make connections.
It is my understanding that most OIT students have
been able to get summer internships, but in the past,
Umpqua, Clark, and Renton students have often missed
these opportunities. It is our hope that with the intern
board every student will be able to get an internship.
If you want to hire an intern, then you need to be
looking at making arrangements much earlier than you
would think because there is only a finite number of
students and they get snapped up pretty quickly.
The Education and Outreach committee will be
providing follow up articles offering some guidelines
and insights as to what would make for non-
exploitative, productive and meaningful internships.
In the meantime, I ask every business owner or HR
person in our noble profession to explore the notion
of hiring an intern. If a summer internship is a good fit
for your business model, then act early and have our
Executive Secretary post your internship opportunity on
the PLSO website.
The goal of ensuring that each and every student who
wants an internship gets one is very attainable because
it just makes too much sense to not make it happen.
Internships: A Win-Win-Win Affair By Lee Spurgeon, PLS