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Here in the USA we have, as a group, pushed the narrative that “land surveying” is a monolithic profession (in that it is solely about boundary work) and that it somehow exists outside of and is “better than” the larger field of geomatics.
The reality is that the land surveyors can wear many different hats because they are often authorities on related geospatial services. The landscape of the geospatial industry as a whole is changing, and in turn impacting even traditional land surveying. The surveys we produce and the data we deliver is being used differently than in the past. As a consequence of this (and rapid advancement of technology) we need to know about more than rules of construction, dignity of calls, and case law.
I would say that I am a geomatics/geospatial professional first, and a licensed land surveyor second. Partly because a good chunk of my work does not require a license, but primarily because land boundary surveying simply cannot exist without geomatics.
I suppose one could make the argument that land surveying is a specialty and is all about boundary rather than technical knowledge. But if we go down that road, and ignore the technical knowledge, all we can do is look at monuments and make a decision. No lining out crews on GNSS observation procedures (because we don’t care to learn geopositioning or geodesy or map projections or error theory), or office staff on QA/QC and least squares analysis (ahem, which are required to prove out relative accuracy of ALTA/NSPS boundary surveys), or drafters on dynamic vs. static labels in CAD.
The better (not necessarily best) answer is that boundary surveying exist under the umbrella of geomatics, as a license that one earns after they have proven themselves competent in the technical and theoretical fundamentals of geomatics – with additional training, education and mentoring in the nuances of boundary analysis.
Posted by: @thebionicmanThis will sound harsh, but it’s true nonetheless. No other profession screams for the right to a license based on sitting in the truck long enough. The path without a degree is there, but it’s longer and harder. It should be.
Absolutely agree with this. Those fundamentals take time to learn and they’re not something you just “pick up”, many of them are on par with upper-level university courses…which is not surprising considering that we are supposedly a profession, which means formal education.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: it is absurd to think that every surveyor has the time and the ability to teach (or learn) 2-4 years’ worth of university courses “on the job”.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman“Didactics is a theory of teaching, and in a wider sense, a theory and practical application of teaching and learning. … This theory might be contrasted with open learning, also known as experiential learning, in which people can learn by themselves, in an unstructured manner, on topics of interest.”
New word every day ???? 71 years old and still learning.That’s what’s so amazingly attractive about this site. You learn stuff whether you like it or not, and that’s a good thing.
(much better than trying to explain to SWMBO why I was banned from Bingo for the third time, dammit)
Land Surveying is the intersection of at least five different professions that I can think of. It grew out of Civil Engineering in California so it seemed natural to base it in the University Engineering Department. I think the polymath aspect is why surveying engineering programs have low enrollments. Don??t get me wrong, a few engineers make good surveyors.
In our office we have 2 geology degrees, 1 FSU, 2 OIT, 1 geography degree and I??m the College dropout. The chief of lands (an LS) has a degree in economics and got into surveying because he was working as a diver at an Oceanographic institution when a survey crew surveying the beach asked him to swim the pole out to get some underwater shots. Soon after their boss recruited him into surveying, honest true story.
The law and boundary surveying professions are closely related. The law is merely incidental to other professions mainly when they screw up but for boundaries it is integral. Frank Emerson Clark recognized this fact 100 years ago and he was a lawyer.
Most of the engineers I know knew they were going to pursue engineering in high school, some earlier. I had a boss that said he was sitting in a huge freshman engineering course when he looked out the window and saw some students OUTSIDE with tripods and instruments, what is that? I want to do that. That??s how he switched to Surveying Engineering, to get outside was the motivation.
I got into it because I needed a job and didn??t want to be homeless. My Dad was a Civil Engineer so I knew a little about civil drafting. I knew how to calculate a traverse. It??s a great job for a creative person. Every day in the field requires figuring out how am I going to measure from here to there. Freshman year of HS I had to take algebra, I did okay but the more abstract it got the harder it got for me. Then sophomore year I took geometry, everyone else hated it, struggled, I thought PICTURES this I can understand. Then we got into trigonometry, hey this seems useful, everyone else??sin cosine what?
- Posted by: @flga-2-2
“Didactics is a theory of teaching, and in a wider sense, a theory and practical application of teaching and learning. … This theory might be contrasted with open learning, also known as experiential learning, in which people can learn by themselves, in an unstructured manner, on topics of interest.”
New word every day ???? 71 years old and still learning.That’s what’s so amazingly attractive about this site. You learn stuff whether you like it or not, and that’s a good thing.
(much better than trying to explain to SWMBO why I was banned from Bingo for the third time, dammit)
I landed in surveying/geomatics by accident, but would have been a history teacher otherwise. My wife started out as a Montessori teacher but has since switched over to public while getting her master’s.
The Montessori method blends open learning and directed learning, and depending on the philosophy of each individual school there’s more than one or the other.
The cream of the crop (and most eye-poppingly expensive) schools are state-certified, follow state curricula, and walk that line extremely well. Everyone has different learning styles, and there’s a lot of hands-on and work-at-your-own-pace, but they make absolutely sure that students always meet standards, and usually far exceed them.
Both well-run Montessori schools and true universities are similar in that they impart knowledge as well as help students figure out HOW to learn, effectively turning them into auto-didacts. All professionals need to be auto-didacts, but they still need the fundamental knowledge of their profession. Getting both at the same time is efficient and necessary, and the fact that segments of higher education in the USA have been significantly degraded and/or co-opted by other interests doesn’t make all higher education worthless.
There is always going to be a very small percentage of natural auto-didacts who can literally learn anything and everything themselves, whether or not they have standardized course material or an instructor guiding them. I think I’ve met maybe three or four in my ~40 years.
There is a much larger percentage of people who are not natural auto-didacts, but think that they are and will treat any formal course of instruction with suspicion while throwing out anecdotes about how they saw a [professor/doctor/lawyer/engineer/even surveyor!] do something wrong once. They are usually the ones who also failed to become auto-didacts through instruction, and a good university will weed them out. It’s not a perfect system but it’s about as good as we’re going to get, short of crazy amounts of testing for licensure.
“…people will come to love their oppression, to adore the technologies that undo their capacities to think.” -Neil Postman I remember sitting in trig class (don’t remember if it was Jr High or High School) thinking “When am I ever going to use this?”, but I stuck it out because I was always fascinated with numbers and calculations. It was still in the schooling years that I started working for Dad and found the use for those calculations, almost fifty years later and I’m still having fun with numbers, my only regret was not finishing the Calculus series (got discouraged after lousy teaching on mutivariable calculus, but that’s another story) when I was working with the Traffic Engineer, he told me that I would really like Differential Equations when I got there.
@rover83 There is a serious move at the national level to split up the PS into modules. This would give states the ability to license by discipline if they choose. We really are there as a profession. The harder we fight it the more functions we shed…
- Posted by: @thebionicman
@rover83 There is a serious move at the national level to split up the PS into modules. This would give states the ability to license by discipline if they choose. We really are there as a profession. The harder we fight it the more functions we shed…
This would be a great idea. Count me as a yes vote.
-All thoughts my own, except my typos and when I am wrong. This is the model medicine uses, and it hasn’t been a bad thing for a long time.
I’d be down right scared if my proctologist was also doing dental surgery. I’m glad they specialize and focus on the overarching medical practice first and foremost, and the finer details afterwards.
I see those as part of the general stuff.
Things like monitoring, forensic survey, hydrographic, bathymetric, etc. Would be more specific, but I’m still just learning and my opinions are still pretty spurious at best.
Those things are also general - things that would be included in my “etc.” Rather not have a separate test in any of those.
@tim-v-pls The current plan would split the PS into modules. You could take all five and not experience a change. At the same time the colonial folks could pass on taking the PLSS module.
As deregulation sweeps the country, we need to improve our methods of determining competency. If we don’t adapt, the public is in for serious pain.
I really just consider state laws as the real esoteric variable that makes it so onerous to be multi state licensed.
- Posted by: @thebionicman
The current plan would split the PS into modules.
Why?
Edit: I do see a need for more standardized licensing requirements. While also acknowledging the stark differences in practice in different areas of the country.
From my perspective, I don’t see deregulation sweeping the country in surveying. But maybe I’m isolated where I am.
Also, can you direct me to where this current plan is coming from?
- Posted by: @tim-v-plsPosted by: @thebionicman
The current plan would split the PS into modules.
Why?
Edit: I do see a need for more standardized licensing requirements. While also acknowledging the stark differences in practice in different areas of the country.
From my perspective, I don’t see deregulation sweeping the country in surveying. But maybe I’m isolated where I am.
Also, can you direct me to where this current plan is coming from?
Why…stop by the residential plat being built and grab the surveyor there…drive to the high rise being built downtown, grab the surveyor there and put the residential guy in charge, then drive down to the corner where a surveyor that exclusively does ALTA surveyor is working, push the high rise guy out, and drag the ALTA guy to the plat.
How will that work out? Assuming each of the surveyors has only worked in their specialized field, each of the jobs will come to a grinding halt, or will be done incorrectly. Even if they have only specialized for the past few years, the productivity will falter. The ONLY purpose of a license is to protect the public.
That is “Why”. Are there reasons “No”? Yes, there are.
Now, we have a professional duty to only work in the areas of our expertise, so each one of those guys should simply refuse to do the work they are not experts at. But, that doesn’t always work, and worse, we often thing we know things we don’t.
They did this with Structural vs everything else a long time ago. What I do not want to see is where you can do a construction module and get the same stamp as if you did the boundary module. That happens in engineering with everything except structural.
I too would like to see who is pushing for this. Mostly I do not care, but I mildly think it is a good idea.
-All thoughts my own, except my typos and when I am wrong. Ok, I agree that moving those folks to a different aspect of surveying could be disastrous. But, I’m of the mind that more regulatory hurdles wouldn’t be helpful.
Too me, our profession – surveying – is more analogous to the practice of lawyers than it is to medicine.
Working in area of expertise: Good
Working outside of area of expertise: Bad
Here’s a great example..
(Forgive me, I’m the one nimrod in my family that did t go into medicine)
Who does and performs most of the Colonoscopies?
Yep. General Surgeons.
Why? Because they’re the ones doing the resection and removal of the colon etc.
Sure, the gastrointestinal docs do them too, and some of those even do some surgery, but not most.
The broad base of the critical parts of Surveying should stay in a standardized and absolutely foundational process.
Where you decide to find more specific interest and comfortable application comes out of the passing of the big stuff, the grains of sand are last.
Great topic, another great read for this site to share with more people coming up the path.
I disagree.
Surveying actually knows something about what they are doing.
Lawyers think they know everything once they have one little bit of information, and they are routinely making misdirection and obfuscation of facts about what’s real or true to sway opinions.
Just my Unhumble opinion.
Um… surveying is not medicine.
A few years ago I was at a social event with a recently licensed hairdresser who was complaining about the licensing requirements for hairdressing. She turned to me and said something to the effect of “I know you’re licensed too and the requirements are the same”.
I was literally dumbstruck… no the requirements aren’t the same.
Hairdressing is not surveying.
And surveying is not medicine.
I didn’t say they were.
I’m using the analogy of the USMLE as a natl standard for the benchmark all physicians are licensed by first, as a model of how survey could be regulated, that’s all.
And yeah, I’m sure that was an awkward moment for sure…..hair dresser is an occupational license, not a licensed professional. Weird to think that is how people perceived your background.
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