17 Professional Land Surveyors of Oregon | www.plso.org 2023 Surveyor of the Year After starting his undergraduate at Oregon Institute of Technology in 1976, he went on to complete a graduate degree in geodesy at Purdue University in Indiana. He recalls that remote sensing was really interesting to him in those days, which obviously didn’t involve the computing ability we have now. “Aerial imagery was put on 9-by-9-inch film,” he says. “And you could capture a square mile of the Earth’s surface on one image. And then you can extract the centimeter-level data off the imagery. I found that fascinating that you can condense the Earth onto a teeny image, but yet, you can go back and extract precise data from it in the office.” Walker studied photogrammetry and was also interested in data adjustments, so he minored in statistics. “When I graduated, I probably was thinking I’d go to work for a government agency doing some of the larger projects but there happened to be a faculty position at Oregon Tech,” he applied thinking he would teach for three to five years and move on. That ended up becoming a 39-year career. Walker announced his retirement recently, but not exactly with the timing he had hoped for. OIT recently underwent some major restructuring and, of course, the pandemic affected timelines and processes for many things. Major changes to university policies and procedures in a short period of time created much turmoil at the university. OIT experienced the first faculty strike in the history of the Oregon University System, formation of a faculty union, and resulting collective bargaining agreement. “It all added up that we lost a lot of faculty,” explains Walker. Professor Mason Marker was one of them who left and went back into private industry. While it has been a challenging period, Walker notes that the university is emerging from it. But that means some things have had to change. Marker resigned in spring 2021. The university only considers faculty position requests once a year in the fall, and the department gets word sometime in the middle of the year whether they can search for faculty members or not. “We had to get through the next year, which would have been the 2021–22 academic year without Mason. So I asked a lot of our alumni who are licensed surveyors, if they could step up and help fill in and graciously, they did, and they’ve done a wonderful job.” The department was authorized to search for new faculty in the 2022–23 academic year, and had a couple of good candidates, but it just didn’t work out. Faculty positions don’t just automatically roll over, they have to be requested again. Walker requested a position in fall of 2022, and the position was put on hold, which meant teaching another year with adjuncts. Authorization came through again to search to fill Marker’s position this year. “I wanted to stay until that position could be filled and try to find individuals interested in my position to make a smooth transition,” Walker says. However, Walker’s father passed away this summer, which altered that trajectory for him. Other family obligations also came up with his sister’s husband also passing. “It was an incredibly difficult decision to make, but I had to submit my resignation for this year,” says Walker, “and my position is in the final approval process.” Hopefully, by the time this issue is printed, that will be finalized, and the search for Marker’s position is ongoing. “If we can get some good individuals to fill those positions, the program will be in good shape,” he says. In the past, a doctorate degree had been preferred, but not required, for faculty positions like Marker, who has a master’s degree, professional licensure, and many years of industry experience. Changes the university has implemented require that all tenure-track faculty have a PhD, which is rare among professional surveyors. “Most of your PhDs are at research universities or with government agencies, not teaching at an undergraduate university,” explains Walker. “As we move forward, Mason’s position will be an instructor position, where a master’s degree and professional licensure are appropriate credentials, and so that will allow us to hopefully fill that position with someone who has a credential similar to his. The drawback, of course, is that an instructor position requires an annual contract whereas there is more job security with tenure.” But for a small program like geomatics, Walker explains, tenure is not as important as doing a good job of teaching. But, Walker’s position, which also needs to be filled, is tenure-track, which requires someone with a doctorate and a research interest that they’ll have to pursue. “Hopefully we can find someone who would enjoy that challenge of building and growing a geomatics program and doing a little bit of applied research,” he says. In retirement, Walker hopes to rekindle a long-time interest in flying. “I got my student pilot’s license before I had my driver’s license,” he says. “My mom would drive me to the airport so I could fly. And you know, I’ve always thought there was something wrong with that!” he says with a laugh. “I soloed and was working on my private pilot’s license when I started going to college. And then of course, I couldn’t afford to fly and, then I’ve been busy here. And of course, you got your family obligations, you know, house payments, car payments, kid payments, tuition payments. So, now that all of that is done, I’d like to fly again.” Walker and his family have a cabin in the Idaho backcountry. His father was a pilot, so that’s a place the family has flown into and out of for decades, he says. “I would really enjoy flying back into the many backcountry airstrips where you can fly in and fish and just enjoy the country.” Walker joined PLSO in 1984. He recognizes that the goal of OIT’s surveying program is to prepare students for professional licensure. And as a licensed surveyor, it’s important for them to be involved in their professional organizations. “For that reason, it was not only appropriate but necessary for me to be a PLSO member and understand how PLSO functions in supporting the profession at large,” he says. “Students need to get plugged into PLSO as a way to prepare them to be future professionals. So, by bringing students to the conference each year and having them volunteer, they get to know PLSO members and it instills in them the need to be a member of professional organizations.” When Walker started studying surveying, technology had not advanced very far yet. “We were pulling tape to measure distances, and measuring angles with optical instruments was the state-of-the-art in the industry,” he says. Now, of course, surveying has gone through a technology revolution, using satellites and other very sophisticated software. “I’ve found it very interesting to be able to incorporate all those new technologies into the program. And it turns out it’s beneficial for our graduates to have education in higher technologies and the theory behind them as the industry has adopted all that.”
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