President's Message

Members,

National surveyors’ week is upon us. Surveyors’ week runs from March 15th to March 21st, culminating with Global Surveyors Day on March 21st. As you may know, the goal of National Surveyors Week is to explain the importance of surveying and to make the public aware of the role that surveyors play in today’s society.

The first Surveyors Week was signed into law on November 30, 1983, as Ronald Reagan signed public law 98-182 designating the week beginning March 11, 1984, as “National Surveyors Week”.

Surveying is one of the world’s oldest professions. Beginning in Egypt in 3000 B.C. surveyors were utilized for construction projects and reestablishing boundary lines after the annual Nile River flooding. Fast forward to 1785, within the United States, Thomas Jefferson helped craft a method for orderly transfer of property through the Public Land Survey System (PLSS) in the Land Ordinance of M ay 20, 1785. Today We are still determining boundary lines and so much more. Surveyors utilize technology like laser scanners, GNSS, drones, and LiDAR to aid the AEC industry with whatever projects they can dream up.

Our job now is to educate the public about what we do, and to introduce middle schoolers and high schoolers to the surveying profession. This can be done in a number of ways.

The National Society of Professional Surveyors has created the NSPS Trig-Star program. Trig-Star is a competition that recognizes and awards high school students who excel in mathematics, with the goal being to demonstrate practical uses for mathematics and bring greater awareness to the surveying profession. For more information, see the trig-Star Information al flyer. https://blogs.ifas.ufl.edu/ffgs/files/2025/07/Trig-Star-general.pdf

If you know of a teacher that may be interested in having their students compete, they can reach out to [email protected] for more information.

As surveyors we have the tools and ability to do outreach to the Boy Scout and Girl Scout groups. Scouting has a surveying Merit badge. Contact your Local scouting troop, the field work requirements take about an afternoon to complete.

Lastly, I would like each of our members to show up at your local municipal Surveyors’ Week proclamations, projecting visibility of the surveying profession in the communities we serve.

Your thoughts are important, and I would like to hear from you regarding any comments or suggestions you may have. Please email me at president.fsms@ gmail.com.

Respectfully submitted,

Robert N. Johnson, PSM, CFM

 Previous 2026 Messages
January 2026
February 2026