PLSO The Oregon Surveyor July/August 2021

4 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 44, No. 4 The Future Is Calling From the PLSO Office Aimee McAuliffe PLSO Exec. Secretary We as a professional community need to come together and create partnerships at the state level and within school districts to make this kind of forward thinking a reality. T hank you for renewing your mem- bership with PLSO the 2021–2022 year! If you haven’t done so yet, be sure to head on over to plso.org to re- new today so this isn’t the last edition of Oregon Surveyor to make it to your mail- box. Log in and go to your profile page to complete the process. We don’t want to see you go and need you now more than ever! As the new membership year starts, I’ve been thinking of the future. This year has brought on parallel stories. My parents are retiring and moving to Arizona this month, andmy daughter just finished her first year of high school. Believe it or not, she was eight years old when I started working with PLSO. It’s a little crazy how fast time passes. Just yesterday, my par- ents were driving me to the University of Idaho, nervous and excited about moving into their new, empty-nester, professional couple home inWest Linn. I amnow start- ing the process of discussing what kind of college my daughter wants to attend. (Yes, my mother has already suggested Arizona State and University of Arizona.) Looking at all the timelines and what she should be achieving and accomplishing to be where she wants to be, it all seems so far away. She has chosen a major (yes, possibly will change four more times). We’re now at the point of this little familial journey I have taken you on. She just fin - ished her freshman year of high school, and she is certain she knows what her major is—Business and Consumer Sci- ence. She will move forward with each step for the next three years with that plan in place—researching schools with the best programs, looking at scholar- ships and financial aid that applies to that school for that major. She is 15 and deci- sions she’s thinking about right now will have a domino effect on her life moving forward. And yet, she can barely drive. (Be- lieve me, I’m in the car. My Jeep’s traction control light turns on when she drives... on perfectly sunny days.) Once a month, PLSO gets a phone call from someone who has their under- grad degree already and has been out in the world working for one or two years. They tell me that they wished they had learned about land surveying sooner and they want to become licensed, but they don’t want to have to go through the pro- cess of earning another degree. It’s the phone call I receive the most from the public. Every single one of them hopes that classes they took will apply, and I really hate telling them they will have to put more time in the field because they didn’t think about geomatics when they were choosing their college and major. What does this mean to us? I think it means that the demographic we have to appeal to right now are 14- and 15-year- old kids. This is the time college starts becoming a little more real and they’re taking electives to find what interests them. PLSO needs to find a way to make land surveying a part of the process. One way is through Career and Technical Ed- ucation (CTE) programs. According to the Oregon Department of Education, “The Oregon Career and Technical Education (CTE) State Plan is a high level four-year strategic plan that integrates state and federal priorities into an implementation plan for the ‘Strengthening Career and Technical Education for the 21st Centu- ry Act’ (commonly known as Perkins V). Leveraging ongoing partnerships across