5 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org From the PLSO Office competitive workforce. ACTE strives to empower educators to deliver high quality CTE programs that ensure all students are positioned for career success,” and their members are professionals representing all facets of CTE, including counselors, instructors, and administrators. The educational segment is proving very successful because they rely on community involvement and advocacy. They are focused on filling immediate employment and skills needs from the business community, rather than looking at which college degrees bring in the most money for the lowest cost. According to careertech. org there are 12 million high school and college age students enrolled in CTE programs across the nation. “CTE prepares these learners for the world of work by introducing them to workplace competencies, and makes academic content accessible to students by providing it in a hands-on context. In fact, the high school graduation rate for CTE concentrators is about 90%—15 percentage points higher than the national average.” In Oregon, 95% of CTE students are graduating in four years vs the state average of 81.3%. This is hard to ignore. So what makes CTE tick? They know everyone and they network by bringing value. The state of Oregon has grants available for funding and supporting programs is becoming more and more important to big business. In 2019, Darrell Fuller and I participated in the selection process for CTE grant project selection. One project that sticks out in my mind is the Coastal Drone Academy, which is a program of Career Tech High School, an accredited charter school in Lincoln City. This is a program that is part of a school, supported by members of the community, partnered with the Unmanned Safety Institute (USI), a for profit certification program. When this program first started in 2018, USI put out a press release explaining the program: “The Coastal Drone Academy is a model example of how high schools across America can implement successful career and technical education programs with successful student outcomes, and USI is honored to be a part of their story. The Small UAS Safety Certification consists of four courses totaling more than 180 hours of instruction. Students who successfully complete the program are eligible to take USI’s credentialing exam leading to the Small UAS Safety Certification, an industry certification demonstrating expertise in the safe and professional application of remotely piloted aircraft making them highly qualified for careers in the burgeoning industry of Unmanned Aircraft Systems, commonly referred to as ‘drones.’ Students are then enrolled in USI’s Career Pathways Initiative, providing them with a direct link to employers that are looking for professional remote pilots.” Things you can do to help promote the profession: 1. Follow PLSO at PLSO_1959 on Instagram and share our message. 2. Talk to your kid’s teacher or CTE teacher if they are in high school. 3. Represent PLSO at career fairs and conferences by staffing the booth or speaking about the profession. 4. Contact Education & Outreach Committee Chair Lee Spurgeon to let him know you are willing to host student drive-alongs or shadow days. 5. Create a quality internship program and share it on the Job & Intern Board on plso.org. How to Send Us Your Work Please email the editor Vanessa Salvia with submissions. vsalvia@gmail.com Your submission should be in .doc format. Please send images separately (not embedded in the document) and at the highest file size available (MB size range versus KB size range—larger sizes are encouraged). Please include the author’s name and email address or phone number for contact. This is a good example of how we should be partnering with CTE programs and schools in general. It doesn’t have to start this big. But we do need to get the message out there. It’s not just our surveying workforce that needs us—it’s the engineering and construction work force that needs us to do this too. With that said, PLSO is a member driven association. That means, we also need YOU to step up and grab your megaphone.
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