10 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 45, No. 3 Featured Article the rest, and landed on surveying. The aspects that drew me were the outdoors, math, technology, problem solving, drafting/creating maps, and potential independence. It’s been almost five years now of being my own boss. Jason Page, PLS The program coordinator at Vincennes University, Bill Clark, answered the most important question I asked him with a “Yes!” I asked him, “Will I have a job when I graduate from this surveying program?” I was sold then (2002), and never looked back. Michael Chiniquy, Associate Member I was working as a security consultant after I got out of active-duty military. While I was working on a site, I saw some surveyors and thought to myself, that looks like more fun than what I’m doing, so I started talking to them to find out more. I found some training opportunities through the Air Force reserve and signed up. I’ve been doing surveying ever since. James Hibbs, PLS, WRE I got a job through a high school cooperative working with Douglas County public works in 1977. I loved the job and went on to Umpqua Community College and Oregon Institute of Technology. Landed in Medford in 1982, working for a local land surveyor and purchased the business from him in 2002. Clint Ward, PLS, WRE I was going to college for civil engineering. As part of the curriculum, I had to take a plane surveying class. After the first week of class I knew what I wanted to do. I switched majors and never looked back! Brenton Griffin, LSI My way was very similar to Clint’s! It felt good to get wise and enlightened to the better profession. Bill Ham, PLS, WRE By default. I had been working summers for the US Forest Service. I had been on a road survey crew and the next year the engineer in charge thought he could help out the land survey department and let me go search corners for a summer. By a month into that job, I was hooked. I knew I had found my home and began learning all I could. I was offered a career appointment, passed the tests for an Idaho PLS and was being groomed for a permanent job. Then the so-called “environmental movement” took off and destroyed many forest service jobs. I went back to surveying roads for about three years in a non-spotted owl forest, passed the test for an Oregon PLS, and moved into a land surveyor position. I’ve been in it ever since 1989. The job is great and I still get paid to hike. Life is good! Dick Staples, PLS (Idaho) I started surveying in 1971—it was a summer job in the Colorado Rockies and an opportunity to make enough money to get me through my last year of college. I fell in love with the mountains—and the job—and never went back to school. I had no idea of the depths of the profession at the time, but it has truly been a rewarding journey. Terry Hendryx, PLS During a career day my junior year in high school, Crown Zellerbach’s district engineer took us out and we charted on paper the contours of a hill at a nearby park. Dave Wellman, PLS, PE I started with a summer job working for a timber company marking lines. One thing leads to another, and each new job experience piques the interest to see what other challenges are out there. Ultimately, it’s the combination of history, research, detective work, field experience, and the technical and legal aspects all rolled into one profession. How could you get bored? Robert Hamman, PLS I became a land surveyor by chance. I was visiting my dad in Florence, Oregon, one wintertime and he told me that Eugene Wobbe of Plants and Associates PE and LS was looking for a chainman. I went down, applied for the job, was immediately hired, and started work as a chainman/ brush cutter. Reaganomics came about in the 1980s and I lost my position and moved back to Salem. I worked road construction for a few years. One of the gentlemen I was working for hired me to work for him at Riverside Engineering and I became a crew chief. One day while coming to work after nine years of being a crew chief there a truck hit my truck and I became disabled and was told I could never field survey again. From there I took some classes at Chemeketa Community College and received an associates degree. As a first-year student I passed my LSIT, second year passed the professional exam except for Oregon law. It took me another year to pass Oregon law, and that’s how I became a surveyor. continued If we are to attract new surveyors to the profession, we need to cast a wide net to attract people from fields where you might not expect surveyors to come from.
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