Learning a trade offers numerous advantages, including job security, lower education costs, hands-on experience and the potential for a rewarding career.
Recently, some students from Durant High School had the opportunity to get some hands-on surveying training with UF/IFAS School of Forest, Fisheries and Geomatics Sciences.
“We try to give our students as many opportunities to get real-world experience in the program as possible,” said Katie Britt, assistant director for Geomatics Extension. “We have a lot of classes that have hands-on components, from labs to field trips to demos, and also internships or co-ops.”
Completing an internship or co-op is a requirement for graduation from the program. These are paid internships, and they often lead to job offers after graduation.
“We often receive more requests to post internships than we are able to fill,” Britt said. “At our education center in the Tampa Bay area, a lot of our students continue working with their employer after the summer ends when classes start again. The ability to work while in the program not only give students a great way to immerse themselves in the industry while in school but also to pay for school as they go.”
Students received a lot of industry support, including tuition reimbursing at a lot of companies and scholarship opportunities from the Florida Surveying and Mapping Professional Society statewide and locally, as well as from industry support for scholarships through the Geomatics program at the University of Florida.
“Every student’s internship (or co-op) experience is different, but they all involve real world work experience,” Britt said. “Students complete internships where they collect data as part of field crews, collect and analyze drone data and work in drafting departments. There is work experience in any application of surveying including boundary and land surveying, geospatial analysis, remote sensing, seafloor mapping, LiDAR scanning and mapping with drones.”
Britt and her team also try to provide extracurricular opportunities for students to participate in projects that may differ from their work experience.
“Ali Gonzalez, our Geomatics program specialist in Plant City, does a great job of providing short but real-world projects that students can gain additional experience,” Britt said. “He included students in drone data collection, LiDAR scans of historic structures and even designing and laying out a corn maze.”
There are so many applications for a geomatics degree.
“Unfortunately, surveying isn’t a widely known field, even though anyone who likes maps, technology, math or has good spatial sense might be a good fit; we find that a lot of people aren’t aware of the career potential, both with and without a license and college education, until later in life,” Britt said. “One of our goals in the Geomatics Extension program is to introduce more people to what surveyors do, whether because they might use a surveyor’s services in the future or because they might want to become one.”
If you would like to learn more about the programs offered at UF/IFAS School of Forest, Fisheries and Geomatics Sciences, contact Britt at k.britt@ufl.edu.
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