This Year’s Student Competition was again organized by Young Surveyors Network in Washington, DC.  The participation from Colleges around the County was excellent. In total, 24 schools from around the Nation competed in the competition, from Cal Poly Tech to the University of Puerto Rico and even Klein Collins High School from Texas. The competition structure was similar to last year, but due to the number of schools, half participated in the monument hunt portion one day, while the other half tackled the field exercises.  The monument hunt consisted of each school and a young surveyor scavenging around the city for NGS monuments. They were given an ArcGIS field map app designed by Linda Foster, ESRI of the monuments, including the NGS data sheets. Different point values were given to over 60 monuments. Their appointed young surveyor then recorded a picture of the monument, and extra points were given to teams that posted a picture of the monument to social media. Be sure to lookup up #nsps and #ysn to find these posts on various social media platforms.

All field exercises took place near the Washington Monument. The field exercises comprised a four-sided traverse, level loop, and triangulation.  Young Surveyors were at each station to set up the equipment, judge the professionalism, and time the student’s computations.  For the traverse, students were given a compass and chain and needed to calculate interior angles, leg distances, and resulting coordinates. The level loop between 5 temporary monuments was judged on field notes and closing elevation. The triangulation exercise used the Washington Monument as a backsight. At the same time, set up on two other coordinate known monuments and was tasked with turning angles on a T2 to calculate the coordinates of an unknown coordinate for the monument Jeffersons Pier.  It was great to see the outside interest from passers-by wondering and asking what we were doing, especially because students were given extra credit for wearing Surveying attire from any past time period. Thank you to Les and Lisa Van Horn for bringing the equipment from NWTC, WSLS Foundation, and their personal collection and guiding the traverse exercise.

A social event after the competition Thursday evening consisted of Bingo, Cards, and Bags. Friday morning, NSPS YSN held its spring meeting. Our new president Jacob Heck led this meeting, and we welcomed Nolan Mark as Vice President and Heather Keenan as Secretary. Thirty-five young surveyors were in attendance from 21 different states!  By far a new record.  We discussed upcoming events, including FIG Working Week (Orlando, Florida, May 27 and 28) and the Fall meeting (Cleveland, Ohio, September 20-22).  We also collaborated on centrally located study material, sharing YSN information and licensing requirements on our page on the WSLS website. Tim Burch stopped in our meeting and spoke of the possibility of including Young Surveyors in the NSPS Day on the Hill campaign and the importance of Young Surveyors to NSPS’s future.

The winners of the competition were announced Friday following lunch.   NWTC placed First in the Associate’s Division, and Ferris State University placed first in the Bachelorette Division.  Congratulations to all the Teams for their efforts and participation in this year’s competition. Follow NSPS YSN on Instagram and LinkedIn for more posts and content.