Recently, members of the Illinois Professional Land Surveyors Association (IPLSA) showcased the skills and cutting edge technology of the land surveying profession at Technology Center of DuPage (TCD) in Addison. Benefitting from the presentation were the high school students enrolled in TCD's Pre-engineering, Construction, and Landscape Design & Management programs.
Kyle Allred of Cemcon, Ltd. gave the students a little history of the field, noting that three of the four presidents immortalized on Mount Rushmore were surveyors. He also demonstrated how geometry and trigonometry have very practical uses in determining distances, heights, and angles over great distances or challenging terrain.
Allred and other IPLSA members then gave students the chance to try the basic surveying skills of pacing (determining short distances) and differential leveling (determining elevations). First students used traditional equipment familiar to most people: the automatic level, a telescopic device mounted on a tripod; and the tall rod or pole marked off in tenths of a foot. Then representatives of Precision Midwest brought out today's state-of-the-art, high-tech tools that utilize GPS, lasers, and digital scanning technology.
Surveying skills and technology are present in many activities beyond road-building, determining boundaries, and construction. GIS analysts, photogrammetrists (aerial photographers), mining engineers, geodesists, and topographic/hydrographic (land and under the sea) surveyors use these skills for environmental, military, logistical, and industrial purposes. Students were fascinated to see how the scanning technology is used for accident and crime scene investigations.
For more information about surveying and its career paths, visit the IPLSA website: www.iplsa.org.
Technology Center of DuPage is the high school career and technical education campus for 24 DuPage area high schools, offering career programs as an elective to juniors and seniors. For information about TCD programs, visit www.tcdupage.org.
IPLSA participants:
Kyle Allred, Cemcon, Ltd.
Kory Allred, NIU student
Timothy Burch, Cowhey Gudmundson Leder Ltd.
Mike Bytner, Weaver Boos Consultants
Brian Griffin and James Holt, Precision Midwest
Doug McClintic, Jacob & Hefner Associates, Inc.
Carol Sweet-Johnson, Johnson-Western Surveying, L.L.C.
Corey Worthel, Crawford, Murphy & Tilly, Inc.
Eric Zingre, EZ Surveying, Inc.
