Dr. Steve Frank at New Mexico State University was the dean of the program and over I think dinner one night he was telling me and the rest of the students that probably what they learned in the four-year NMSU surveying engineering degree. They would the students would probably only use about 25% of the information they learned during these four years during their practice once they graduated and we were shocked by this because you say wait a minute. We’re spending, you know, $100,000 for years of our life to get this degree and you’re only going to give us something that will use 25% of the time. He said but wait a minute, I don’t know what 25% of this degree you’re going to use. You know, Tony you may use it in the geodesy side. Tim you may use it in the boundary side. Josh you may use it in the you know hydrographic serving sign. In order to prepare you for all of the possibilities of surveying we have to give you such a broad base, that you can go out and really do anything and we said wow, that is some profound information that is a golden nugget and it really made us change our perspective about why we’re learning things and how we’re learning. Well same here and I said, you know, we are set up with our curriculum to provide such a broad level of knowledge. Geodesy photogrammetry lots of boundary surveying construction. I mean just a wide swath of surveying information that you can go out and do anything you want to after you graduate.
Over the past I’d say 10 or 15 years. There’s been a really big push in some programs to be what’s called multi-disciplinary. So some programs have GIS combined with land surveying some programs have computer science combined land surveying some programs combined construction management with survey and I think that’s really cool because you/we have to be able to practice with others in this 21st century world, but after you know teaching in one of these programs, I realized that you know, if you have 30 credit hours of information to give a student. Well, would you rather give them 30 credit hours of land surveying or 15 hours of surveying and 15 hours of construction management. You’ve got to choose and given how quickly land surveying has evolved over the past century personally as the Director of NISET, I feel like that, you know, we have to give you every land surveying course available. That’s you need to practice. So if you do not have a subdivisions class when you leave your associates program, or you do not have a construction surveying course when you leave the certificate. That would be a major deficiency and it would set you up to have a much harder time to pass your NCWS exams and a much harder time practicing when you graduate so here at night, I said we are 100% focused on land survey. That’s not to say we ignore technology because we do UAS lidar, Machine operations. The newest surveying technology is absolutely covered but we don’t go outside of our wheelhouse. I’m a surveyor and I would never imagine teaching civil engineering or something else and as a 21st century surveyor. I also expect you guys my future students to be focused on your profession and if we focus slowly as a school and as a program on surveying we have the unique ability here at nice set to set you up for success in our courses. We don’t just teach you random stuff from the book. We don’t start from chapter one and go to chapter 20, we focus on the skills necessary to practice for a lifetime. And if we do that then I think that setting you up to pass your surveying exams is easy because the surveying exams are nothing more than a mirror of what the profession is and what NCWS expects the profession to be in 10,20,30 years. And that’s why the nice at curriculum is superior to almost or in my opinion every surveying or similar program in the country. I hope you join us.