Education Committee Report
Texas Society of Professional Surveyors
COMMITTEE ACTIVITY REPORT
Board Meeting Date: February 5, 2004
This committee met on Saturday, January 8th from 10:00 am till approximately 2:30 in Austin at the L.C.R.A. office. I want to personally thank Fred Crawford for making the arrangements to meet there. The following people were in attendance and I want to thank them for being there - some of them had to travel several hours to be there:
Shannan Carrozza
Fred Crawford
Bud Thompson
Chester Varner
Richard Worthy
Henry Kuelem
Bill Coleman
Joe Webber
Gary Jeffress
Michael Haberer
Liz Lathan
Henry Mejia
Mark Cowan
I have attached an agenda that I had prepared as well as comments from our meeting. We will meet again at 8:00 a.m. on Saturday morning on February 5th before the board meeting and will give a report at the board meeting.
2005 Symposium update: need to verify Internet access, 3 courses still need to be submitted for c.e.u approval, reviewed courses, times, and days with committee - liz will confirm with speakers
Short Course - Basic and Advanced: The moratorium was only for 2004. We had previously set up a sub committee, Mary Chruszczak, to meet with the short course committee and Dr. Jeffries to discuss. Mary joined us on a 45 minute conference call (speaker phone) to give us a report on her meeting. I then had everyone in the room give their input on the subject. I then assigned Gary Jeffress, Henry Kuehlem, and Joe Webber to join Mary on the committee and charged them to review the comments, hash out the details, and submit to the committee a recommendation and plan - more on this later - hope to have a recommendation to present to the board of directors at the board meeting
Chapter and State seminars: Another topic that has been an issue. How to meet the needs of the local chapters (presenting their own seminars, whether their speakers and courses or TSPS speakers and courses, or seminars overseen and sponsored by the staff at TSPS). They need these as fund raisers, education, etc. How to not overlap or interfere with education efforts (seminars, symposium, annual meeting, etc) at the state level. Once again, I let everyone give their input and then appointed a sub-committee. I appointed Mike Haberer as chair and assigned Richard Worthy, Bill Coleman, Henry Mejia to this sub-committee. I charged them to take the comments, hash out the details, and make a recommendation of a flexible plan that would be a solution (compromise) where local and state can present seminars without conflict and where both are financially positive.
Hope to have a recommendation to present to the board of directors at the board meeting.
Speaker Development: Discussion on course presented by Ron Prince at the annual meeting. Are we (tsps) ready to take over this? Consensus was no, discussion followed. Decided to try to have Ron Prince hold course again - see if available in September - committee authorized me to pursue contract. His original proposal was approximately $ 3000.00 - will negotiate.
Course Development: Shannon and Fred will present the workshop again on the Friday before our June board meeting
2006 Symposium: The Odessa Convention and Visitor Bureau had contacted tsps about hosting the 2006 symposium in Odessa. They were at our meeting, provided lunch, and made a 30 minute presentation (and discussion) of their proposal. Will be hard to beat. The committee looked at a comparison of the Lubbock or Abilene area. The committee’s opinion was favorable depending on if we have local chapter support (and someone to take on the lead position). Will make finally decision later (maybe at the next meeting).
2005 T.S.P.S. seminars Discussion on seminars to been held this year:
February 11th - San Antonio- GPS legal aspects
March 4th-5th - Heart of Texas boundary retracement
August 19th-20th or 26th-27th- Concan - locating original corners
December 10th - Austin - no topic yet
December 17th - Houston - lidar
After briefly mentioning the other items on the agenda (strategic plan for the professional development program, promotion of the certification program, the 2005 budget, online courses, and speaker resource page on website), Gary Jeffress had a couple of announcements to make:
Advanced Short Course will be July 24-29
They are establishing a special reference center in Corpus Christi, and plan an online database for elevations in Texas. They will use GPS technology to rectify elevation problems. They have received $750k in Federal funding for the project.
June 8-12 is the North American Surveying & Mapping Educators Conference on the A&M Corpus Christi campus. They expect 90 surveying and mapping professors, and papers will be published in the ACSM journal. They plan to package the industry papers together on the 9th and offer it as a one-day seminar for professionals, run by Chapter 12.
WHEW !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
All for now
Michael g Parker