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Paying the Profession Forward: Attend a Career Day

By Michael Lewis, LS, CFS
Young Professionals Committee Member

Licensed Land Surveyors are getting older. Fewer new licensees are entering
the profession. Some may say that the profession of Land Surveying is fading
away as technology makes it easier and faster to do the kind of mapping that
once took weeks or months to accomplish. Yes, you need a license to legally slap
some invisible lines on paper. But I don’t know that it stops a lot of people from
collecting data, making maps, adding GIS parcel lines in the background, and
sending it off as a “map”. Did I get your attention? I’m hoping most of you are
saying, “What is this guy talking about, he’s full of it”. You’re probably right.
I think some of these statements could be true. I also think we do a darn good
job of trying to promote this profession so that it has a future so that younger
generations will want to take charge of what we leave for them when we retire.
But we can always do better. Do the younger generations even know what
Land Surveying is about? If I had to guess, I’d say where I am on Long Island
most grown-ups don’t know what we do, let alone the younger generations.
That is where we need to step in. “Hey, you’re that person on the side of the
road taking pictures with the tripod thingy.” That is the normal response I
get when I tell people I’m a land surveyor. So how can they inform their kids
about land surveying? I guess I was lucky, my father grew up in very rural Nova
Scotia. He knew the value of land, he knew what land surveying was about,
kind of, and he was the one who got me my first job as a land surveyor because
he saw the value in knowing where your property’s boundaries are. I had zero
clue what he was talking about. Fast forward 25 years and I see an opportunity
to attend a career day at my old Middle School and I took it. It was really just
pure luck that I was even made aware of the event. I went to “Back to School”
night, I saw a blank space on the wall of posters in my son’s math classroom,
and I had just seen a stack of Get Kids into Surveying posters in my office.
I thought, “one of those will fit perfectly in that blank space”. Next thing I
knew, the Home and Careers teacher and I were discussing how I can pay it
forward with more than just a poster.
But what if we all were proactive about attending a career day? If we sought
them out in our local school districts? If we helped to shape them somewhat
so that they gave us the opportunity to show the cool stuff we do and the cool
tech we use to do it? The Career Day I attended only lasted about an hour and
a half unfortunately. There were 3 sessions, each 20 minutes long, with time
to move between rooms with each ring of the bell. About half a dozen kids
moved in and out of the class during each session. The teacher who organized it
is trying to re-start an event that has been dormant for years. I think this is the
second year in a row it’s been held. I offered to work with the district to bring an
event like this to the high school and perhaps hold it after hours. So everyone
has time to really check out different professions and have a chance to speak to
us. Wouldn’t it be great if school or class trips were able to attend part of the
NYSAPLS conference and walk through the exhibit hall (an excellent idea by
the way)? Picture that in a high school gym for a few hours.
I’d like to think that the students I spoke to signed up for my presentation
because surveying looks interesting. I was one of about 10 or so different people
who were there to talk about what it is they do for a living. Everyone from
military officers and first responders to professional engineers and architects. I
threw together a quick PowerPoint, brought in a robotic total station, showed

18 EMPIRE STATE SURVEYOR / VOL. 60 • NO 2 / 2024 • MARCH/APRIL