2 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 46, No. 2 From the PLSO Chair MESSAGE FROM THE CHAIR For the last few years, the lack of new licensed land surveyors coming into the profession within Oregon and within the nation has been brought up for discussion many times. Since there are not many new surveyors entering the profession, this in turn dominos into a lack of new members within PLSO. For the record, I have been a card- carrying member of PLSO since 1974, and this was before PLSO had a student- member category. At the time I started my college education at Oregon Institute of Technology, one of the professors invited us to a PLSO chapter meeting in Klamath Falls, where they spent time explaining PLSO and the benefits of joining. At the end of the meeting, I decided, along with a few others, to join PLSO. I no longer recall what the membership cost, but I did mention something to the effect that I wasn’t prepared for this expense at that time, at which one of the members said to us, “just fill out the form and we will pay your first years’ dues.” In my mind, that was probably the first true professional act that I witnessed. Sure, it was a way to get us into PLSO, but it also showed me that they saw us as the future and that getting us involved in PLSO early would pay dividends. The more important question to ask now is, have you invited a non-member to join? Now, this is an organization whose purpose is to defend and improve the survey profession, so it naturally begs the question, why would you not persuade anyone who has an interest in the survey profession to join PLSO? More importantly, why would anyone not want to be a member of PLSO, especially if they have ideas on how to improve the survey profession. Being a licensed land surveyor isn’t easy. We have Oregon Revised Statutes, Oregon Administrative Rules, and state and local land use codes that we need to be up to date with and apply to our daily work. We have changing technology for how to gather and use the data we collect in the field and in the office. On top of all of that, we are trying to earn a living and enjoy life. Not an easy task for anyone to tackle. PLSO helps in these areas. We help in defending the laws that people want to change to make our jobs more difficult, we fix or create laws that will better the profession and help the public, and we provide training to help keep the members up to date on the changes in the profession. Some will say PLSO comes up short in some of these areas in aiding the surveyor. My answer to that is, get involved and help correct the problem. Yes, that will take time out of your schedule, but it is an investment that will pay off in the future. At the PLSO Conference this past January, I asked those attending the annual business meeting who were under 40 years of age to stand up and be recognized. It was a great pleasure to see the number of people who stood up. As I said, this is our future and we should help them in any way we can to be an active member in PLSO. Some of the Young Surveyors have commented that they feel intimidated when they attend any PLSO functions. That is natural, since the younger members may not know many of the people in the group, and when you are not comfortable in your surroundings it is easy to just not put yourself into that situation again. Well, we all felt that when we entered into this organization and found a bunch of Tim Fassbender, PLS PLSO Board Chair Tim says he cherishes his membership card, which was signed by Bert Mason during Bert's last year as PLSO Executive Secretary.
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