PLSO The Oregon Surveyor March April 2021

8 The Oregon Surveyor | Vol. 44, No. 2 Member Spotlight SPOTLIGHT Member By Vanessa Salvia Michelle McBride McBride Surveying and Mapping M ichelle McBride, a Klamath Falls, Oregon surveyor, graduated in 2012. Over the nine years she's been in the industry, a lot has changed for her. At the beginning of 2007 and 2008, Oregon, and the nation, was in the midst of a recession. At the time, McBride was working a temporary job with the state and applying for a per- manent position. “They told me that I had the experience, but didn't have the degree, so they hired somebody else that had something like an art degree from the ’70s and no expe- rience in the job I was doing,“ she recalls. “She questioned them about the logic of not hiring her when she had the experi- ence, and they acknowledged it was not the best situation. That motivatedMcBride to consider going back to college. With a husband and two young daughters at the time, she needed something convenient. Luckily, Oregon Institute of Technology is right in town. In fact, McBride had begun attending OIT to study software engineer- ing right after high school, then gotmarried and started a family, so she didn't finish that pursuit at that time. “I looked at the curriculumguide book and ripped the medical half out because my parents are both in medical and I knew that was a route I never wanted to go!" McBride said with a laugh. "And I've al- ways been into math, drafting, and that kind of stuff since high school, so then I just went through the engineering and tech side of the programs they offered and fell upon land surveying and I was like, this sounds kind of cool.” Her husband does excavation and di- rectional drilling, so McBride had some knowledge of the "other side" of con- struction and what surveyors do. “I was just looking through the book, look- ing at the descriptions, and doing some research on what the fields were," she says. "I didn't have a lot of pre-exposure to surveying. I don't know that I really knew exactly what it was until I started reading the book, honestly. But I took the assessment test and scored pretty well for being 12 years out of high school and the same year our youngest started kin- dergarten when I started college.” She was up to the challenge of starting a new career and once the decision was made to pursue surveying, she jumped in with enthusiasm. McBride graduated in four years with a bachelor's in survey- ing and a minor in GIS. “I really liked that part of surveying was outside, in the field, and then also in - side, and I liked the history portion of it that involved learning about the past yet using technology now,” she says. "I real- ly clicked with it once I started doing it." McBride grewup in Salemand thenmoved to Klamath Falls at 15, when her father attended OIT for vascular technology. At the time, she couldn't place Klamath Falls on a map, but she ended up marry- ing, starting a family, and putting down her own roots. After graduation, McBride worked the obligatory four years to gain supervised experience, then sat for her own license. Since Klamath Falls is only 20 minutes from the California border, she found it beneficial to get that license also, and she could get that one sooner. “So I sat formy national exam for a licensed surveyor, then I sat for the California li- cense and got that, and then when I was able to, I got my Oregon license,” she said. During her supervised work years, she worked for Mitchell Duryea, who was an adjunct teacher at OIT with a base in Spokane but a remote office in Klamath Falls. After a few years of working for him, he relocated permanently to Spokane. Duryea offered McBride a job there, but she wasn't interested in moving. “So then I basically went around knocking on the other three surveyor front doors,” she says. “Fortunately I landed in one of the larger engineering firms. Then later, I was able to go out on my own.” Her Spokane mentor specialized in ALTA Surveys. At the second firm, McBride was able to domore of the work involved with overall surveying. One of the things she appreciates most is the work involved with land planning, such as land parti- tions or property line adjustments that A rare selfie for Michelle McBride.