15 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org Member Spotlight whole and get new people excited about how exciting the profession can actually be. Of course, how to do that is the big question. But Lucey is becoming more involved with the PLSO’s Education & Outreach Committee with the goal of figuring that out. Many people just happen to “fall into” the profession of surveying because they discover it while they are working at something else. “You don’t hear about surveyors on TV, you don’t hear about them on the radio,” he says. “Most of the surveyors I know became surveyors because their dad or their granddad was a surveyor so they knew about it. This is a great job to have, and it’s a job that a lot of people would be interested in if we got the word out and exposed young people to it.” Lucey’s goal is to figure out how to put surveying front and center and make it more visible. That could mean more school visits, improved signage on vehicles or on job sites, and increased opportunities for mentorship. Perhaps there are opportunities to turn surveying-related skills into a game that young people can do in school to earn prizes. Imagine: teaching kids to use a compass and taking them outside to use a compass and map to find something hidden. “That’s how we look for these old corners,” Lucey says. “It could be as easy as a surveyor going into a school and saying, ‘Hey, we’ve got these things hidden out here. I’m going to show you how to use a compass and how to measure the length of your stride, and then you’ll go and find this treasure.’” Lucey says surveying is like “a big Easter egg hunt,” and it’s something that kids can appreciate and enjoy with the right introduction. He has been a surveyor for 25 years, but is more interested in being involved in the greater surveying community now because he feels it has reached a critical stage where some sort of action is needed. “As surveyors we spend a lot of time in the woods by ourselves, not in front of groups of people, unfortunately!” he says, which means that many people don’t ever get to see surveyors at work. The profession is at a critical stage in part because the problem of not enough incoming surveyors was recognized 10, 15, or even more years ago, but not much has changed. “I’d like to say, ‘Let’s all get involved in this and see how many classrooms we can reach in a year,’ just letting people know what we’re all about,” he says. “I think, if we do that for five or 10 years, I think you’d have enough surveyors that you wouldn’t have to worry about the future of the profession.” My whole reason for wanting to be a geologist was because I wanted a job where I could work outside and have adventures. But once I realized that surveying was a job, I realized it’s actually a lot more interesting to be a surveyor than a field geologist, or a professional geologist, because surveyors get to go to a lot more places and have a lot more adventures.
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