BY CHARLES D. GHILANI
SURVEYING PROGRAM CHAIR
and
THOMAS A. SEYBERT
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR
THE PENNSYLVANIA STATE UNIVERSITY
LEHMAN, PENNSYLVANIA, 18627
URL: http://surveying.wb.psu.edu
PRESENTED AT:
XVITH NORTH AMERICAN SURVEYING MAPPING EDUCATORS CONFERENCE
LAS CRUCES, NEW MEXICO
JUNE 10, 1997
Dr. Charles Ghilani is an Associate Professor at The Pennsylvania State University where he has been a member of the faculty since 1989. Dr Ghilani has been the Surveying Program Chair since 1990, and developed the baccalaureate program in 1994.
Dr. Thomas Seybert is an Assistant Professor at The Pennsylvania State University where he has been a member of the Surveying faculty since 1996. Dr. Seybert teaches the civil engineering aspects of surveying and land development in the program.
Since the baccalaureate program's inception three years ago, the Surveying Program at Penn State has been one of continual growth. The faculty have grown from two to four full-time members. Last year, the freshman class had forty students. This paper will discuss recruiting efforts, growth in the size of our faculty, possible reasons for the program's early success, plans to insure its continued success, and future directions of the program.
I. INTRODUCTION
In 1994, the Surveying Program at Penn State admitted its first freshman class into the baccalaureate program. Since its beginning, total enrollments have grown from the mid-forties to over sixty students. This fall, when the program has its first "true" senior class, the total number of students is projected to climb above ninety. The program has used several different avenues to increase enrollments. This paper will discuss current recruiting methods and discuss some of the recent approaches that appear to be successful.
During this three-year period, the number of faculty in the program has been increased by two. Unfortunately during this same period, the program has seen six different faculty members. Although this fluctuation can be attributed to personal circumstances of individual faculty, the turn-over of faculty has been the single most limiting factor in the growth of the program.
The program is exploring the possibilities of expanding outreach by utilizing compressed video and the Internet. By these methods, the program is hoping to furnish additional courses to resident students, improve the quality of current courses, and provide distance education to professionals. To date, the program has included two compressed video courses via two other Penn State locations. Consideration is also being given to offering compressed video courses for the Connecticut Association of Land Surveyors. Furthermore, the feasibility of placing the entire surveying curriculum on the Internet is being explored. While both of these educational delivery mechanisms are in their initial phases, they offer the program the greatest possibilities for expansion.
During the past three years, the program has increased the quality and quantity of its laboratory equipment. Three years ago, only three total stations were available, one of which had a data collector. Furthermore, only four computers, one 486 computer and three 386sx machines were available. The program has added total stations, Pentium-Pro computers, and software to handle a lab size of 21 students. Programmatic changes and advances such as these are discussed later in this paper.
II. RECRUITING
INTERNAL/STATE EFFORT
Penn State consists of 22 campuses geographically dispersed throughout the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. The University Park campus, which is the location for most engineering programs in the system, is located in the center of the state. However, the Wilkes-Barre Campus, where the Surveying Program exists is in the northeast corner of the state, a hour drive for individuals in the western side of the state.
This geographic dispersion has been used advantageously to promote the program throughout the state. For example, it was not uncommon during the early nineties for Penn State admissions personnel and academic counselors at other campus locations to be unaware of the existence of the associate degree granted by the Surveying Technology program, which had existed at the Wilkes-Barre campus for nearly 40 years! Thus, the first efforts to promote the program were directed from within through the admissions and counseling offices. Arrangements were made for presentations to be delivered to personnel in these areas during university-wide conferences. The presentations were primarily intended to make key university faculty and staff people aware of 1) the Penn State Surveying Program 2) the content of courses in the program, 3) the job placement opportunities for graduating students, and 4) the fact that the degree is the first baccalaureate degree offered by Penn State's College of Engineering located at a campus other than University Park.
The presentations were also designed to challenge and educate the audiences about the surveying profession. Questions such as, "Picture in your mind your view of a surveyor." After a brief pause, the question was asked, "Now ask yourself, 'How did Dr. Ghilani get a Ph.D. in surveying?'" Obviously this was nothing more than an attention getter. However, it served the purpose of changing the audience perception from the pure construction/land surveyor image to one that includes geographic information systems, geodesy, global positioning systems, photogrammetry, remote sensing, etc.
Another recruiting approach was working directly with program supporters from the Pennsylvania Society of Land Surveyors (PSLS). Professional surveyors from around the state took advantage of "Surveyors Week" to visit high schools and promote the profession. Program literature and campus brochures were provided to the PSLS public relations committee for distribution in the high schools. Likewise, the program established a presence at the PSLS Annual Conference. This interaction with PSLS members helped to develop a state-wide awareness of the program.
With awareness and support from these two groups, the program began to see a greater number of students applying from other regions of the state. The quality of the students improved in the process as well. One can speculate that this quality improvement was due to (1) the creation of the baccalaureate program, which would logically attract traditional baccalaureate engineering students, and (2) the effort to educate the key high school and university personnel about the type of student who might be interested and successful in the program.
The overall quantity of the students in the program has likewise increased. The first freshman class in the baccalaureate program had a size in the mid-twenties. In the second year, the freshman class was in the low thirties. This past year, the freshman class-size hit the forty student mark. Currently, enrollment for the upcoming Fall semester seems to be in-line with last year, with an expected freshman class-size in the range of the high thirties to low forties.
LOCAL HIGH SCHOOL RECRUITING
The same program awareness problem that existed within the Penn State System also existed in the regional high schools. The strategy used in this instance was to accompany the admissions office personnel in meetings with high school guidance counselors, attend all local college fairs, and meet with high school faculty whenever the opportunities presented themselves. In addition, the program made a standing commitment to the campus admissions staff to meet with any prospective student, or speak to any interested group with little notice. To prepare for these short notice functions, presentations were developed that informed and educated these groups about the surveying profession. This led to more program exposure among high school guidance counselors, teachers, and students.
Program faculty also have become involved with the local Tech Prep Consortium. Tech Prep is a national effort to track interested high school students into professional fields such as engineering. Through these efforts, faculty from the program and high school teachers met directly on a regular basis. Before this effort, there were high schools only fifteen miles from the campus that were unaware of the existence of the program. Interestingly enough, as a result of these meetings, children of area high school teachers and guidance counselors have entered the program. This exposure has also led to a better quality student from local schools.
Program faculty also created a presence at University-level functions related to recruiting. These efforts included college open-houses, receptions for high school counselors, and college fairs. At these functions, the previously developed presentations were used, literature about the program was dispersed, and demonstrations were performed using the latest technology in surveying. Again the attempt was to change the current image of surveying, and explain why the profession is important to society.
OUT-OF-STATE RECRUITING
Recently, recruiting efforts were begun at the regional level. During the past year, visits have been made to the New Jersey, Maryland, New York and Connecticut Professional Land Surveyor Conferences, as well as ACSM and APSRS conferences at Charlotte, Baltimore, Nashville, and Denver. At these events, a display booth was prepared, materials were distributed, and personnel answered questions. While it is too early to state what effect these visits will have on future program enrollment, it can be said that the program's presence has made many professional surveyors aware of surveying education at Penn State. For instance, at the Connecticut Conference, very few people were aware that Penn State had either a two or four year degree in surveying even though the campus is only two hours driving distance from the program! While attending the Connecticut Conference, program faculty were introduced to other professional surveyors from Massachusetts and Vermont who were likewise unaware of the program's existence. From these visits, the program chair received approximately 15 request for additional information from potential students.
THE INTERNET CONNECTION
Finally, the last and probably most substantial stride in recruitment efforts has been made through the Internet. At the end of 1996, a home-page for the program went on-line. In January of 1997, the web site was getting "hit" 1200 times per week. From its presence on the Internet, the program has had over 20 prospective student requests for further information on the program. It is still too early to know the effect this approach to recruiting will have on the program's enrollment. However it is obvious, that this method of recruiting is not only one of the least costly but also seems to be one of the most effective.
III. PROGRAMMATIC ADVANCES AND CHANGES
As noted earlier, three years ago the program had only 3 total stations and one data collector. Software consisted of AutoCAD Release 10.There was little else in the way of modern equipment. Since the inception of the baccalaureate program, it has added four total stations, 14 data collectors, 23 Pentium Pro computers with AutoCAD Release 13 for NT, Eagle Point LandCADD, SoftDesk AdCADD Civil/Survey, ESRI ArcVew, PC ARC/INFO, ArcCAD, and ARC/INFO for NT. The program has established two Continuous Operating Reference Stations (CORS) in cooperation with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation. Two Topcon Turbo-S1 dual frequency receivers and two Turbo-GII receivers have also been received on extended loan for educational use. The computing hardware was purchased with special student tuition fees; total stations were purchased with funds from the State government and the PSLS funds; data collectors were donated by Surveyor's Module Incorporated (SMI); and software was either donated or purchased at extremely reduced rates. Due to the acquisition of both hardware and software, the program can handle laboratory sizes with as many as seven groups of 3 students. Plans are to expand this number to 8 groups (24 students) in the near future with the procurement of another total station.
The program is also looking to expand its course offerings in the first two years. Courses being discussed include a GPS mapping course and a boundary retracement course. The rationale behind creating these courses is to promote student interest in surveying and to expose the associate degree students to GPS. It has been observed that the best students are seldom excited by the material in the lower-level surveying courses. Thus, methods of exposing them to the more theoretically-complex subjects at a practical hands-on level are being considered. These topics have been briefly introduced to the students, and it has been found that this has had a positive effect on student interest and attitudes towards surveying.
Additionally program faculty are involved in developing instructional software to assist students in their educational studies. This is especially true in the areas of equipment and software training. The first instructional package was developed this past year. The package is a tutorial introducing the SMI data collectors. Similar packages will be developed for other equipment and software. This SMI tutorial software is free and available from the Penn State Surveying Program web site at the URL: http://surveying.wb.psu.edu/psu-surv/free.htm.
The software used to develop these instructional packages includes Macromedia Authorware, and Lotus ScreenCam97. Authorware provides the software developer with icon based programming for authoring instructional multimedia products. ScreenCam97 allows the instructor to combine computer screen operations with voice. This provides software training packages which are easy to create. Students have found products from both of these packages helpful in their studies. It has been found that these instructional aids have alleviated the training-aspect of a class which allows the instructor to concentrate more on theory while the students still obtain practical hands-on experience with the technology. These efforts have raised the level of excitement in the students toward the surveying major.
Finally, nontraditional students are being provided off-campus course offerings. During the past two years, credit courses have been offered at other Penn State campus locations utilizing compressed video. Also an Internet course is being offered for the first time this summer for the traditional student entering the senior year. This is a pilot course to test the acceptability and viability of this medium of instruction. Advantages the Internet provides are 1) students can take a course in the summer while they work, 2) students can search the Web for related courses on a subject, and 3) courses can be provided to professionals seeking to further their education while at home without disrupting their work schedules.
In years to come, many program courses are expected to be developed for the Internet. In fact, it is hoped that in the future the majority of the surveying curriculum will be offered in this manner. Professional societies have also been offered the availability of compressed video courses at the location of their choosing. It is hoped that both of these initiatives will provide professionals with an opportunity to obtain credit courses in or near their homes.
IV. CONCLUSIONS
The Penn State Surveying Program has finally taken form as a program with four faculty, with students enrolled in all four years, and climbing enrollments. Recruiting efforts are being explanded into neighboring states and the curriculum is being developed to be portable utilizing both compressed video and the Internet. The program has substantially advanced its lab equipment, and is looking to further improve it with GPS and softcopy photogrammetry. The program has received considerable financial assistance from the Pennsylvania Society of Land Surveyors for both equipment and faculty, and is grateful for this assistance. Given Penn State's forty-year tradition in surveying, the surveying faculty believe the outlook is bright for the program and look forward in helping to advance the surveying profession as a whole.