9 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org Featured Article • AGC is willing to partner with PLSO and others on the cost of future videos. • Videos with an influencer can cost anywhere from a few hundred dollars to several thousand depending on the number of followers they have, etc., however, the results have the potential to be immediate and substantial in the number of inquiries or hits generated on the topic. Look at the stats for the “LadyLandSurveyor” on page 8! Very impressive! • More work needs to be done by PLSO and ACEC in this regard. AGC has indicated that they are willing to partner on future efforts. Recommendations that have not been implemented • Expand the Certified Survey Technician (CST) Program in Oregon • Work with OSBEELS and employers to create financial and licensure incentives for this program. • Offer CST testing at every PLSO and LSAW conference. • Expand Outreach to Students and Schools About Surveying • Committee to be led and implemented by PLSO. • Take a new look at how and where licensed surveyors went to high school. PLSO data shows most Surveyors come out of small schools (Knappa, Vernonia, Clatskanie, Estacada, Colton, etc). • Put our effort into schools that are rural or have a rural/urban mix (OC, Hillsboro, etc). • Provide students with different options for how they become Surveyors which match with the revisions OSBEELS has made for licensure. • Work with AGC to pursue opportunities with “technical” high schools like Cascadia Tech in Vancouver and Career Technical Education Center (CTEC) in Salem. • Look at changing how we “sell/ market” Surveying. Rather than sell as a branch of mathematics, sell it as being a detective out looking for monuments or as a branch of history reviewing historical documents, then market it and get it out to the target audience through the Communications Committee and student/school outreach. Get high school, CC, and potentially middle school students out for ride-alongs with surveyors. Reach out to schools that are under served to encourage more women and minorities to go into surveying. • Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion— Exploration of this topic has just begun with regards to how to expand the surveying profession, however, surveying is notoriously a white male dominated profession; By implementing an aggressive DEI program, surveying can be expanded to recruit from populations which include gender, racial, socioeconomic, and other previously underrepresented segments of society. This effort represents a large untapped resource of potential future surveyors which should be aggressively pursued. • Expand the ODOT and Oregon Tech (OT) Partnership to other locations in the state. ODOT and OT have partnered to bring HS students interested in Surveying to a 3-day experience on campus. It is a combination of time in the classroom and hands-on time in the field. Feedback has been very positive. This could be used to focus on bringing a broader diversity of people into Surveying depending upon the outreach to HS in the area. • Need partnerships with industry and universities or community colleges to expand to other locations. This model is also being used successfully in other states. • Expand Oregon State’s effort of the past few years where high school teachers and counselors are invited to come to campus to learn about surveying and the need for more surveyors. Staff perform demonstrations with different technology and give the teachers/counselors a chance to be involved and ask questions. OSU has gotten a lot of positive feedback and the teachers and counselors are excited to share what they have learned with their students. This could be expanded at OSU and to other universities and community colleges. • Need partnerships with industry to be able to expand this program. • Expand Oregon State’s Summer Experiences in Science and Engineering for Youth (SESEY) program. This program brings in a pair of middle/high school students from underrepresented backgrounds to spend a week doing geomatics related research and learning about opportunities in surveying as well as an introduction to college in general. • Need partnerships with industry and universities or community colleges to expand to other locations or for more students at OSU. • Find and utilize opportunities to use Teaching With Spatial Technology (TWST) to teach middle school and high school teachers about Surveying and how it can be included in their curriculum to get students aware of Surveying. • Create public and private partnerships for scholarships to encourage more students into Surveying. It would be great if we could get folks to have one application for multiple surveying scholarships. Clark College has this setup for scholarships. • Opportunity may exist through Oregon Office of Student Access and Completion https:// oregonstudentaid.gov/. • Pursue the legislature to create a program to pay student loans for those who go into surveying. continues
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