Professional Societies & Growing the Profession

Ric Moore, post: 436262, member: 731 wrote: What are the professional societies doing in that regard? I'm only asking this because I believe that it is the role of the professional community to grow their profession, not the licensing board.

This question/challenge came out of the thread Certification or Licensing. The conversation had turned to an aspect of the licensing process that is used by some state boards to help those who failed the licensing exam understand where their weaknesses are that presumably caused them to fail. Some made the point that that aspect or tool, the Diagnostic Report of exam performance would be a very valuable tool also for the person who passed to know what their areas of strength and areas of weakness are.

Without rehashing that whole discussion here, Ric argued against the idea, and among his arguments was this deflection, um, I mean challenge to the professional societies, implying that they are not doing their part to provide opportunities for professionals to advance their knowledge of the profession.

I can't speak for other states, but the California Land Surveyors' Association is not idle in this regard. Several of our chapters provide a series of review courses designed to help prospective licensees prepare for the licensing exam. Typically, these will be weekly 3 hour classes on various practice topics over the course of 3 or 4 months. The primary purpose is to review, but many of these sessions are designed to teach as well, being appropriate for practicing surveyors who would like to bolster areas they may be weak in.

Ric himself participates in many of these review courses to speak on the structure of the exam, perhaps how the content was decided upon and other exam development info, application and testing process, etc. He may not be aware of the educational nature of the other sessions or the thousands of volunteer hours which have gone into preparing materials for, and presenting the topics. The examinees themselves spend typically between 32 and 50 hours attending these sessions. The licensees who prepare and present the materials do so with no fee to themselves, sometimes travel several hours to where the session is given, and may have 100, 200 hours or more that went into preparing the materials.

Most of these sessions are also provided at the annual State Conference. Which brings up the conference.

Most, if not all state societies put on a conference for their members each year. Sometimes, the CLSA will partner with the NV society (NALS) or combine their conference with the Westfed or NSPS conference when it's scheduled to be in CA (or NV). The conference typically offers 3 days of sessions, an 8 hr pre-conference workshop, and the LS exam review sessions running continuously throughout the conference. Most of the sessions are informative or educational in nature. Some end up being just so many war stories, but most are opportunities for surveyors to advance their knowledge in one way or another. Ric didn't bother attending this year.

The CLSA has volunteers who attend career days at local high schools, bring the Trig Star program to the schools, taking the opportunity to speak about surveying, volunteer with the Boy Scout Surveying Merit Badge program, act as laisons with the colleges and universities in the region that offer surveying and related degrees. The CLSA and individual chapters often sponsor seminars on various practice topics.

Some of the chapters have been struggling with their membership numbers. I and others have suggested that their chapter meetings offer more educational content primarily focused toward new licensees and LSIT level techs. At that level, it is also interesting and often useful to many licensees who've practiced for many years but are eager to hear other perspectives or fill in knowledge gaps, and useful to pre-LSIT techs looking to make surveying their career. At some chapters, this advice has been met with blank stares as if I had just delivered the suggestion in Klingon. But in other chapters, they've been doing exactly that, and those chapters are thriving.

Our state level professional practices committee has produced several informational brochures designed for practicing professionals and for landowners & law enforcement and other agencies regarding the right of entry, monument preservation benefits and responsibilities, and looks at other practice issues to provide educational materials/resources for.

Our legislative committee is very active in watching, supporting or opposing as appropriate, and proposing legislation. Although CLSA exists for the benefit of surveyors, one of the primary considerations when we weigh legislation is "does this serve to protect the public, help the public, or harm the public?"

Ric stated, correctly that it is the job of the professional societies to provide for professional development and to grow the profession. As he well knows, in CA, our society has been quite active in this regard.

But as has often been discussed, there are fewer people looking to surveying as a career. There is sometimes a lot of wailing that our profession is dying as evidenced by the dwindling numbers. The societies can probably find some additional ways to help the profession gain more recognition among young adults and high school kids, and it might make some difference.

I think that the bigger factors are the fact that with newer technology, work is done much faster and with much less effort now than it did a generation or two ago. 1 or 2 people can now accomplish in a day what it took 3 to 5 people to do in a week 30 years ago. It simply takes much fewer people to do much more work than it used to.

There is also the fact that surveyors, particularly entry level surveyors, seem to be more affected by economic cycles. When things slow down, surveying is one of the first services affected. When a recession hits, the low people on the career ladder may go months, or more recently, years without being able to find a steady job surveying. The deeper and longer the recession, the higher up the ladder the affect goes. That's not particularly appealing to a young person choosing a career path, and not something that efforts by professional societies can control or distract from with much success.

It's my view that, unfortunately, the boards, at least the CA board has been doing their part to increase the numbers of licensees by a combination of dumbing down portions of the exam, and through the use of low cut scores to achieve higher passing rates. It seems that it's not practice issues by which the board feels it justifies its continued existence, but numbers of licensees.

The CLSA, and I'm sure many other state societies have been active in efforts to grow the profession and offer professional development to practicing professionals. Meanwhile, our Board has resisted suggestions that would help professionals focus their development efforts, both with the suggestion of providing a diagnostic performance breakdown to those who pass the licensing exam, which places almost no burden on the board but has a lot of potential for public benefit, to other more substantial suggestions.

So I offer this back: What are the boards, particularly CA BPELSG, doing to better serve their primary purpose of ensuring public protection? More importantly, what are they resisting doing that would be reasonable steps to better serve that purpose?