PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
November 2019
781
Education
&
Professional
Development
at
ASPRS
by Stan Hovey, Co-chair 2019
ASPRS Education and Professional Development Committee
As a result of discussions at the January 28, 2019 Education
and Professional Development (E&PD) Committee meeting
in Denver, Colorado during the joint International LIDAR
Mapping Forum and ASPRS Conference, it was decided that
the E&PD Committee would prepare an article for an issue
of
PE&RS
. The purpose of this article is to provide a service
to ASPRS members by informing them how central education
and professional development is to our society’s purpose. Yes,
there are other important reasons for our society’s existence
such as networking, honoring individual accomplishments in
the geospatial technology field and gathering people together
to experience specific items for sale by companies or available
from government institutions. However, the ASPRS mission
statement clearly supports the advancement of the under-
standing of the geospatial sciences and the expansion of the
public awareness of the profession. From the earliest days of
the American Society of Photogrammetry (ASP) in 1934, edu-
cation about the mapping sciences, in particular photogram-
metry and remote sensing, has been an integral part of our
organization’s focus.
This article is presented in three sections. The first is a
reflection on the past, the second recaps the present and the
third introduces a few ideas for the future. Unfortunately,
there is never enough room to cover all the things in the past
and the present is always moving; by comparing what we see
now to the past can give us a perspective to perhaps think
about what we should try to adopt in the future. As far as the
future goes, sometimes it requires a bit of “trial and error”,
sometimes events coalesce to provide unseen opportunities
and sometimes we really can drive what happens. All of this
together gives us an opportunity to see the ASPRS “picture”
of its E&PD posture for us all to consider.
THE PAST
Looking back over 85 years of our society’s history, it is almost
daunting to capture all the evolving aspects of how our pro-
fession engaged in education outreach. One of the most obvi-
ous was the quarterly
Photogrammetric Engineering
which
provided a significant amount of ongoing technical develop-
ment in its four-to-six articles each quarter. In addition, there
was a continuous number of specific topical publications pro-
duced by the Society. Some of these were in partnership with
other organizations, but most were authored by Society mem-
bers and produced for sale by the headquarters staff. The first
Manual of Photogrammetry (1944), started a repetitive devel-
opment of this primary teaching aid, now in its sixth edition.
In 1960, there were many other imagery exploitation-related
books covering photographic interpretation such as manuals
of remote sensing in many volumes, historical books related to
aerial and space-borne photography such as the 1997 Corona
and the 1989 Historical Development of Photogrammetric
Methods and Instruments to name a few.
I can only relate back to the mid-1950s when I was a for-
estry student at what is now the New York State College of
Environmental Science and Forestry (NYSCESF) and began
going to the ASP annual conventions in Washington, DC. At
that time, our Regions and college professors were the main
links to ASP and arranged for some of us students to attend
these annual conventions—always held at that time in the
Washington, DC area. There were no ASP student associ-
ations or technical workshops at that time. In fact, certi-
fication was not an ASP sponsored activity either; so pro-
fessional development was from the papers presented and
networking with attendees and exhibitors at the meetings.
Awards were given by various organizations like KODAK,
Bausch and Lomb, Autometric, Inc. and the Society itself.
Scholarships were few. Aerial photography with film was
the norm, with satellite film-based photography just begin-
ning to be developed by the early 1960s. Photogrammetry
was performed using analog optical/mechanical equipment
with on-line computer support just evolving during the 1960s
with analytical photogrammetry slowly replacing pure ana-
log processes. The national civilian interstate road building
program in the 1950s and the many defense/intelligence-re-
lated imagery handling programs through the 1990s really
drove the growth of ASP as it became ASPRS. The unclassi-
fied earth observation satellite systems opened up the remote
sensing part of ASPRS and began engaging many university
research and teaching initiatives. This eventually led to more
student scholarships and to the Student Advisory Council
(SAC) established in 2006. Then, as the certification program
expanded from photogrammetrists to geographic information
systems professionals and others making up the 10 designa-
tions we now have, the ASPRS conference practice of holding
various technical workshops grew to what it is today.
Overall, even though much of the original ASP was about
professional networking, having an opportunity for members
to gather for a sharing of experiences and friendship, there
was always a “back-story” of education in the image sciences
being a key supporting element to the organization and the
success of all the private and government enterprises through
the years. This has always been true for the other profes-
sional societies making up the Coalition of Geospatial Organi-
zations (COGO); such as the National Society of Professional
Surveyors (NSPS), the Association of American Geographers
(AAG), the United States Geospatial Intelligence Foundation
(USGIF) and the rest of the current 13 COGO members.
Photogrammetric Engineering & Remote Sensing
Vol. 85, No. 11, November 2019, pp. 781–782.
0099-1112/19/781–782
© 2019 American Society for
Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing
doi: 10.14358/PERS.85.11.781
