The eighteenth PLSO Willamette Chapter Surveying Student Appreciation Night will take place on Monday, May 21, 2018 at OSU in the AG Science Room at La Sells Stewart Center from 6 to 9 PM.  Social period will start at 6 PM and dinner will start at 6:30.  

The speaker will be Leonard A. Rydell, PE, PLS and WRE.  He will be speaking on "What Do You See".  He is a fiftieth year graduate of OSU in Civil Engineering and he will be sharing his reflections on his life and his profession.

The event is free for surveying, geomatics, students and $35 Dollars for PLSO members and other attendees.  There will be a drawing for student door prizes at the end of the meeting.

The Caterer needs a head count so interested parties need to have their registration completed by Monday, May 14th.  

Register at http://cce.oregonstate.edu/2018-plso-student-appreciation-dinner-registration

By: Lee Spurgeon, Education & Outreach Chair

Last year there were more summer internships available than we had surveying students to fill those positions. There were about a dozen positions open that we were unable to fill. If you are thinking about hiring a summer intern, go to the PLSO Job & Internship Board and set up an ad earlier, rather than later. Once again, our goal is to get a surveying internship for every student that wants one.  Last year, we had one-hundred percent of the students who wanted an internship placed for the summer and we hope to repeat that success.

If you are a student and want an internship, please go to the online Resume Bank and place your ad there.  Remember that you are in very high demand, so you can be a little bit picky about finding the situation which will best fit your needs in terms of salary, but infinitely more important, the learning opportunities you can hope to pick up this summer which will bolster the relevance of your course work and provide a better chance to put what you do in school into a real world context.

This is truly a win-win program and I hope everyone can take advantage of what this program has to offer you.

By: Frank Lenik, NSPS

The theme for this year’s National Surveyors Week is communication. 

A few years ago, then NSPS vice-president Cavell placed National Surveyors Week under the charge of the publicity committee, understanding then that the purpose of NSW is to get the word out. That the land surveying profession is vital to a stable democracy where land ownership is the basis for most family wealth accumulation. He never directed how it should be done, only that it become a part of the bigger picture of how the National Society of Surveyors engage with our constituents and the public.

There are many ways to address surveyors in general and the public and we have continued in those tried and true veins. NSPS is again working with NOAA and the National Geodetic Survey on how to improve the geoid models for elevation so we can move towards better elevations from our instruments and migrate our data, both vertical and horizontal in 2022. This is a call for more GPS on Benchmark observations. We have done this for years but it is still an important educational tool for surveyors and the public. Many of you are already alerting the public and political entities in our regions through displays, news articles and proclamations. But there is more work to be done.

I often hear surveyors lament about how GIS has negatively affected our profession. This is a misunderstanding of the problem caused by a misreading of the symptoms. GIS was perhaps the second major event caused by the democratization of technology in our field. The hand-held calculator was probably the first but I expect this will cause many discussions (steel tape, edm, etc). The development of hand held computing devices coupled with GNSS antennas has placed the ability to locate oneself on the earth at everyone’s finger tips. Everyone now has an answer, but few know where it comes from or how it was determined.

This is an opportunity for the National Society of Professional Surveyors, and every state society to stake our claim as the experts in mapping points on the Earth. We can do that by opening our umbrella a little wider and reaching out to all those organizations who are using mapping tools in their work. This means departments of transportation, the US Army Corps of Engineers, the United States Geological Survey, the Department of the Interior, universities and technical schools, construction companies, geographic information systems purveyors, drone operators and others who may possess the tools but not the understanding of accuracy and precision. It should be an educational effort not a prescriptive effort, using our knowledge as doorway to attract new members and perhaps even new customers.

This is a call to arms that each one of you speak with, call, write or email someone in your circle and invite them to participate in National Surveyors Week. Remember that we are following in the footsteps of your forebears, Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and so many others. Rise to the challenge and make a difference.

PLSO Announces New Rebranding Partnership

PLSO is excited to announce its new partnership with creative services firm Pivot Group. Pivot is a Portland-based customer engagement company that specializes in telling their clients stories in a compelling way. And that is exactly what PLSO wants to do. Tell our story to the professional community, public and future workforce. PLSO's ultimate goals during this process are:

1.     Increase the public awareness of the importance of the surveying profession and promoting the image of the profession.

2.     Increase the number of young people coming into the profession.

3.     Make PLSO an easily recognizable organization to the public, Oregon legislature, and partner professions.

4.     Make PLSO relevant to Oregon surveyors and increase membership by giving a clear message about who we are and our value to professionals.

With over half of their clients being non-profits, Pivot Group understands the unique culture PLSO brings to the table. The firm has dedicated staff members working in tandem on non-profit accounts, ensuring they are immersed in the language, trends, challenges, and opportunities unique to the non-profit world.

Most recently, they have won national awards for their work, including projects recognized by American Marketing, MUSE, How Magazine, Print Magazine, and Graphis.

The planning, approval and selection process went through multiple discussions at the PLSO State Board level prior to creating a member driven task force to work exclusively on the project. This summer the group selected three firms to interview from a larger pool that had responded to an RFP and unanimously voted on Pivot Group before sending it to the State Board for approval. Minutes of the State Board meetings are all kept online in the Membership Resource tab of Members Only section. 

NSPS Radio Hour — April 10 at 11 a.m. EST