2009: 22^nd Surveying and Mapping Educators Conference

East Tennessee State University, Johnson City

July 8 to 10, 2009

Professor Keith Johnson, Conference Chair

The conference took place on July 8-10. The conference’ chair was Dr. Keith Johnson and Dr. Ghilani the founding president of SaGES (2009-2011). Dr. David Gibson was the keynote speaker with topic “status of surveying education in the US today.”

The conference included about 30 presentations, and it was organized into the following sessions: (1) students with focus on advising, recruitment, retention; (2) faculty with focus on faulty recruitment, program development, and ABET; (3) pedagogy with focus on grading, teaching and learning methods, and new course developments; (4) body of knowledge; (5) technical topics. On the third day there was a discussion on ABET and the bylaws of the newly formed SaGES organization were presented. Furthermore, the discussion on BOK that was started in the precious conference was continued here. The committee continued to work on the next two years and the surveying BOK was finally published in 2011.

The Surveying and Geomatics Educators Society (SaGES) becomes a formal organization, and the officers of the founding board were elected. The educators voted on the bylaws, formalized the society, debated about the name, and selected a logo. Dr. Steve Frank (New Mexico State University) was very instrumental to put together the constitution and bylaws. The founding board (2009-2011) consisted of the following individuals: President – Charles Ghilani, President Elect – Steven Johnson, Secretary – Joseph Paiva, Treasurer – Rich Vannozzi, Board members – Bob Burch, Jim Crossfield, Bill Hazelton, Tom Seybert. Drs. Tom Seybert and Stacey Lyle designed the logo of the society which was later changed following comments received at the Puerto Rico conference in 2011.

A considerable discussion took place regarding the name of the society. The final name includes both “surveying” and “geomatics” in order to be more inclusive as some educators identify themselves with the term surveying and others with the term geomatics. Some educators seemed to be concerned that the public does not understand the term geomatics, compared to surveying, but the educators agreed that the name was not as important as coming together into a formal organization.

References

Bolkas, D., Olsen, M. J., & Ghilani, C. D. (2022). SaGES and the National Surveying Educator's Conferences: History of Surveying Education and Future Challenges. Surveying and Land Information Science, 81(2), 97-126.