It's National School Success Month
A blog by Emily Pierce, PLS, CFedS
When I saw “It’s National School Success Month” highlighted in my feed, I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I have kids in high school and elementary school, so normally September is packed with activity to get them set in their routines of getting to class, playing their sports, doing homework and visiting with friends.
Instead, this month I find myself struggling with balancing a combination of online and in-person classes for them, figuring out how the new schedule works, what is expected and how and when to help them get things done. I worry about their future, how they will get through the next few years and what they’ll learn from all of this to help them as they transition into adulthood.
I think National School Success Month should be every month and the entire country should be engaged in helping students succeed!
I don’t know if my kids will follow in my footsteps and become surveyors, but it has been a fantastic career for me and I enthusiastically support promoting the profession to young people.
Image capturing how parents feel when confronted by virtual learning.
Fortunately, as the former president of the Wisconsin Society of Land Surveyors and Wisconsin Director for the National Society of Professional Surveyors (NSPS), I’ve had the opportunity to work with NSPS and the Young Surveyors Network to develop ways to help promote the profession to students. We have so much to promote! As our world has become more reliant on location information, we are discovering that surveyors are the foundation of location intelligence. Precise location has always been our standard, and we now have exciting new tools to use, including GPS, laser scanners, drones, LiDAR, GIS . . . and more permutations of these are being introduced at lightning speed.
So how do we promote our profession? I’ve posted a few ideas in a column in the most recent POB Online.
For example, right now, one of the most relevant uses of location intelligence is the Johns-Hopkins map of Covid-19*. Nearly everyone in the world with a screen has seen this map. This graphic is a quick way to explain what surveying does in an understandable way. In essence, we associate data with precise geographic location, just as that map does. We use amazing technology to generate data and this information can be displayed in many ways, even 3D renderings.
NSPS and state surveying organizations are doing all they can to promote surveying to young people as the NSPS president, Tim Burch outlined in this article in the August POB Online.
Berntsen is exploring new ways to help get the word out about the many opportunities available in surveying. For years, we have supported surveying education by underwriting scholarships provided by surveying organizations, and last year we initiated a medallion design contest for prospective surveyors.
In the coming months, we will be looking at doing even more to get the word out about surveying. With the current turmoil, messages about a secure, interesting career should resonate more than ever. The challenge is how to reach young people, those who need a new career and those who want an interesting career.
If you have any ideas about what we can do to help raise surveying awareness (or tell us what you’re doing that works), send them to email@berntsen.com.
In return I’ll send you a “SurveyThis” cap (for feasible suggestions) to help you spread the word in your neck of the woods.
* Berntsen is a silver partner of Esri. the creator of the story maps used to display the Covid-19 data in a location-based format. Berntsen uses Esri’s ArcGIS Online platform with its InfraMarker Solution.