PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
August 2015
611
PROFESSIONAL
INSIGHT
An interview with Brittany K. L. Mabry, a graduate student at the
University of Arkansas and a 3D Laser Scanning Technologist
with Morrison-Shipley Engineers. In the Department of Geosciences
she is researching the urban morphology of coastal northern
Mediterranean World Heritage Cities and aims to extend
her research to coastal lidar mapping. She also teaches a 3D
documentation summer field school with the Initiative for Heritage
Conservancy in Nafplion, devoting part of the year to historic
preservation projects in Greece.
Representing the ASPRS Heartland Region, Brittany is a former
Student Advisory Council member, a member of its LiDAR and
Professional Practice Committees, and on the planning committee
for UAS Mapping Reno. She is further interested in UAS-integrated
surveying systems and in developing curriculum for terrestrial laser
scanning, especially as applied to cultural heritage management.
I N T E R V I E W
BRITTANY K. L. MABRY
As a student, what do you feel your role should be within
the Society?
The role of a student member within ASPRS can be just
about as great as the contribution she or he wishes to
make to the Society. Every ASPRS student chapter, re-
gion, and professional division has ongoing projects that
would greatly benefit from the energy and creativity stu-
dents offer. The Society needs us; we assist the ASPRS
staff during conferences and symposia, we promote AS-
PRS on our campuses. We are well-positioned to trans-
form ideas into action, and can thus advance the Society a
great deal. In essence, ASPRS student members take part
in an exchange: to be mentored and trained to be more
competent, better-exposed mapping scientists and geospa-
tial technology professionals on the one hand, and then to
devote part of our time to helping ASPRS operate, on the
other. I believe this is our role as it should be.
What opportunities, responsibilities, and challenges do
student members of ASPRS have?
These three are very closely related, in my opinion. I be-
lieve the central responsibility of student members poses
the biggest challenge to us, and that is to take advantage
of the vast opportunities that our ASPRS membership
presents. If we were to take advantage of all that is avail-
able to us, Student Members would find that we are very
privileged within the Society by the information we can
access, the professionals we can meet, and by the dispro-
portionate impact that the least of our service to ASPRS
can make, to our benefit.
There are many clear opportunities available to student
members—the list is long. I always enjoy the student-fo-
cused sessions and networking events at conferences, or to
be accelerating along the path to professional certification
through the Geospatial Intern Program. The other, less
obvious opportunities are the ones we create for ourselves.
We can come across a particularly thorny technical issue
that might arise in a committee meeting and translate
that into a research imperative. We can meet someone—
many people, and often purely by accident—who will show
us how to go after the career skills we want. There are
opportunities available to ASPRS student members be-
yond those enumerated in the recruitment literature, and
it is our individual responsibility to go after them or create
them.
How do you think ASPRS could be more supportive of its
student members?
It would be more than sufficient for ASPRS to simply bet-
ter communicate all that it has to offer. Part of the de-
sign of the Society involves the integration of its student
members, and it is a very supportive organization as is. I
could not make any prescriptions for the for greater stu-
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
Vol. 81, No. 8, August 2015, pp. 611–612.
0099-1112/15/611–612
© 2015 American Society for Photogrammetry
and Remote Sensing
doi: 10.14358/PERS.81.8.611
