Kansas Professional Engineer
eNews
April 2007, Issue
2
In this Issue:
 PRESIDENT'S
MESSAGE
by Christopher Bohm, P.E.
Despite the recent snows,
spring is really here and somewhere in the recesses of my mind the thought
of spring and the coming summer made me think of the future leadership of
KSPE (actually, Ron Gaches called me and asked me to chair the nominating
committee this year), and I thought it would be apropos to discuss some of
the leadership skills that we look for in selecting nominees for the KSPE
executive committee. This process is underway, and soon each of you will
have the chance to vote for next year’s slate of officers.
There are certain
characteristics that we desire when we consider adding members to your
executive committee here at KSPE. As your only unified voice regarding
professional licensing in the state, we place a great deal of trust in our
executive committee members, since they handle most of the issues that help
keep KSPE strong and relevant. Some desirable traits include:
Passion – Our executive
committee members have to have passion. Passion for their profession,
passion for their work, passion for their futures, and the passion to
inspire the younger generations to consider this great profession.
Good communication skills –
KSPE is interactive with a broad cross section of governmental agencies and
we always have issues and goals to voice. To make our position clear, we
need executive committee members with excellent communication skills.
Team players – We are a team
of professional engineers with the desire to elevate our profession. As
team players, members of the executive committee can leverage their
collective strengths when addressing any issue. In many situations,
efficiency is sabotaged by egos. By working collaboratively our
effectiveness is multiplied.
Business skills – KSPE is in
essence a small business with a goal of representing you as a professional
engineer. We face the same issues of income, expenditures, membership,
budgets, and the scheduling of resources that are taken on by any business.
Executive committee members with experience in the business side of
engineering are an asset.
Loyalty – Being able to
successfully discharge your assignments and commitments to your fellow
committee members and whole of KSPE. There is a sacrifice of personal time
that comes with a leadership position in KSPE. We look to members that have
a support structure in their workplace to help bridge the sacrifice of time
which will be made.
In reflecting on these skill
sets, it strikes me that most engineers I know possess these traits in large
measure. As a parent, I take satisfaction in watching my children mature
and become young adults. In my involvement with KSPE, I take satisfaction
in having witnessed some of our members mature in their profession in part
by taking on leadership roles at the chapter level, then progressing as a
volunteer as a chapter director or chair position on the KSPE Board.
You have to jump in the
water to swim, so consider jumping into KSPE this year as a volunteer
leader. What will you gain? Much like using your personal energy to engage
in exercise, challenging yourself with an active position in KSPE will help
you develop not muscles, but the traits of passion, team building, business
acumen, and loyalty. And I guarantee that your peers with whom you serve
will become important career contacts, and more importantly, your friends.
So, please support the slate
of candidates on the upcoming KSPE officer ballot first by voting, and
secondly, by becoming actively engaged with your local chapter. And please,
if asked to serve, please share your talents with us all.
Have a great spring!
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2007 KSPE Annual
Conference: “A Capital Event”
June 20-22, 2007
Capitol Plaza Hotel, Topeka
Outstanding speakers, continuing education
credits, and networking opportunities will make up the 2007 KSPE Annual Conference. The Conference begins Wednesday, June 20th with the
annual KSPE Golf Tournament and Ice Breaker Reception at Shawnee Country
Club in Topeka.
On Thursday, June 21st, speakers will
address topics dealing with the new PE Licensure Model, emerging ethanol
technologies, wind energy and transmission issues and the development of the
BNSF Intermodal Facility and the Schlitterbahn Vacation Village projects.
You also won’t want to miss a description of the impact of the recent winter
storm on western Kansas and what Salina is doing about water supply
problems.
In addition, Thursday’s program will also
feature the Engineer of the Year Luncheon, President’s Reception and Order
of the Engineer Ceremony. Vendor exhibits will also be on display during
the day.
On Friday, June 22nd, the agenda will
feature a half-day presentation on Exploring and Developing Your Ethical
IQ with Certified Ethics Trainer Dr. Deborah Long. Dr. Long, an ASME
Distinguished Lecturer in ethics, will explore the integrity of licensed
professionals and will help you discover your personal values. A special
tour of the Kansas Statehouse Renovation is also planned for the final day.
Registration for KSPE Members is $225 which
includes all food functions, education sessions and all PDH documentation.
Participation in the golf tournament is a separate fee. For additional
information and to register online, please go to
www.kansasengineer.org.
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MATHCOUNTS Competition Winners
Announced
The 24th Kansas MATHCOUNTS Competition was held
on Saturday, March 10, 2007, at the Salina Bicentennial Center. Students
from across the state competed in a timed mathematics competition that
emphasizes both individual and team skills. Volunteers from the Engineers’
Foundation of Kansas and the Kansas Society of Professional Engineers
administered, proctored and scored the competition.
The top finishing teams were:
1st Place – Topeka Collegiate School, Topeka
Phyllis Hoyt, Coach, and David McCoy, Assistant
Coach.
Team members: Joel Billinger; Nicky Henriquez;
Daniel Kennedy; and David Wang.
2nd Place – The Independent School, Wichita
Naga Kota, Coach.
Team members: Priya Gangadhar; Pavan Kota;
Andrew Parker; and Joshua Werner
3rd Place – Shawnee Heights Middle School,
Tecumseh
Suzanne Jordan, Coach.
Team members: Rian Brown; Kaitlyn Burton; Ellie
Steuart; and Matt Tobaben
The top finishing individuals were:
1st Place – David Wang, Topeka Collegiate
School, Topeka
2nd Place – Leiming Tang, Frontier Trail Junior
High School, Olathe
3rd Place – Pavan Kota, The Independent School,
Wichita
4th Place – Paul Goodwin, Indian Woods Middle
School, Shawnee Mission
1st Place Team
Countdown Round 1st Place
Countdown Round Top 10
Judges
The top four individuals will comprise the
Kansas MATHCOUNTS team and will compete at the Lockheed Martin National
MATHCOUNTS Competition on May 10 – 13, 2007 in Forth worth Texas. Phyllis
Hoyt, coach of the first place team will be the coach of the Kansas team.
MATHCOUNTS is a national mathematics enrichment,
coaching and competition program that increases enthusiasm for and enhances
achievement in middle schools throughout the United States.
Founding Sponsors of MATHCOUNTS are: National
Society of Professional Engineers; National Council of Teachers of
Mathematics, and CAN Foundation. National Sponsors are: Lockheed Martin;
Raytheon Company; Texas Instruments; Northrop Grumman foundation; National
Society of Professional Engineers; 3M Foundation; General Motors Foundation;
CAN Foundation; and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.
MATHCOUNTS in Kansas is sponsored by the
Engineers’ Foundation of Kansas.
For additional information contact:
Don Taylor
Kansas MATHCOUNTS Coordinator
785-575-6430
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 EXECUTIVE
DIRECTOR'S MESSAGE
by Ron Gaches, J.D.
Resolution Would Permit State-Only Option
While attending a chapter meeting last fall I
met a non-member, a local government public works administrator, who
expressed interest in joining KSPE. He was in attendance with one of his
employees who is a licensed Professional Engineer and KSPE member.
Unfortunately, we could not offer him a membership because he was not a
licensed PE or on track to receive his license.
NSPE By-laws, amended just a few years ago to
better focus the organization on servicing the needs of Professional
Engineers, no longer provide a membership category for non-licensed
engineers or other people. Further, the NSPE By-Laws prohibit state
societies from offering state-only memberships to any category of potential
members. Several state societies already offer “affiliate” or “associate”
memberships or “sponsor” or “partner” status to various categories of
individuals or firms who would otherwise not be members of their society.
There are also three states societies who offer state-only membership to
licensed Professional Engineers. These societies include Oregon, offering
state-only memberships by specific authority of its Charter that uniquely
addressed this issue when it became affiliated with NSPE, Texas and
South Dakota, offering state only memberships as part of a NSPE authorized
pilot program that has been discontinued for several years. South Dakota
continues to offer state-only memberships to non member PEs while Texas has
discontinued signing up new state-only members.
The NSPE imposed restrictions on state-only
membership offerings by state societies has led four state societies of the
NSPE North Central Region to support a Resolution that proposes to
amend the NSPE By-laws to permit the formation of state-only memberships.
Supporting societies include Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska and Kansas. North
Central Region NSPE Board member Tim Austin (former president of KSPE) is
leading efforts to promote the Four-State Resolution with the NSPE Board of
Directors.
While several other state societies have offered
their endorsement of the state-only membership option, many other societies
and influential NSPE members are opposed. Their primary concern is that
passage of the Resolution could result in formation of numerous state-only
membership programs for licensed engineers and dilute and weaken the NSPE
membership base. They argue that all Professional Engineers benefit from
the many services and programs of NSPE, whether they recognize it or not,
and it wouldn’t be fair to allow state societies affiliated with NSPE to
compete against NSPE by offering lower cost state-only memberships while
those state-only members still benefit from NSPE work. Supporters of the
state-only membership resolution note that most state societies are
struggling to retain current membership levels (in fact, most state
societies are slowly losing members) and the membership door should be left
open to anyone, regardless of their profession, who wants to support their
State Professional Engineering Society. Further, they argue that in a
“state centric” federation, the national society should not be dictating to
the state societies the nature of the relationship including who can be a
member of a state society. And if state-only memberships for PEs are needed
to keep the doors open for the state society they should be permitted.
As you can imagine, hundreds of emails have
passed between state and national society leaders in recent weeks debating
and challenging the relative merits of these competing positions, and it
isn’t possible to cover all of the related issues in this short space. Your
KSPE Board has discussed the related issues for several years and voted at
its March meeting in Salina to support the Austin drafted Resolution. If
the Resolution should be adopted by NSPE, I’d be surprised if very many
state societies started offering state-only membership to licensed PEs in
direct competition to a full NSPE membership, but I do know a local
government official in central Kansas who I could sign up as a KSPE member.
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KSPE Awards criteria
changes
The KSPE Awards Committee, chaired by Larry Stoss, has made
some changes to the selection criteria in order to better correlate with the
NSPE criteria. The process to update the awards criteria has been an ongoing
process began in 2004 by Mike Hess.
The most significant change
is the addition of a new award called the KSPE Award, which was created to
recognize Kansas members who have made outstanding contributions to the
engineering profession, the public welfare, and/or humankind.
The following criteria for
the KSPE Award follows that of the NSPE Award:
-
Membership in both
technical and non-technical organizations
-
Service to the
profession
-
Service to his/her
community and for the benefit of humankind
-
Honors or awards
bestowed
-
Technical,
professional, or non-professional offices held
-
Regional, national or
international activities of unique quality
· Special
regional, national or international advisory assignments
Following review and
recommendation by the Awards Committee and Board approval, the traditional
Chapter Excellence Award has been discontinued. KSPE President Chris Bohm
has expressed interest in creating a new chapter recognition program for
civic participation. Details of this new award will be developed for use in
2008.
For additional information on these changes and award
applications please
click here.
The deadline for chapter nominations to the KSPE office is
April 30th. The Awards Committee will meet mid May to select award winners.
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KSPE membership recruitment
efforts at engineers week luncheon
Stacey
Lamer and Richard Pool, along with over 900 other engineers, attended the
MSPE/KSPE Engineers Week Luncheon on February 22, 2007 in Kansas City,
Missouri. Their new member recruitment efforts are pictured below.
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KSPE Provides Lunch For
PE Exam Attendees
The Kansas Society of Professional Engineers
provided lunch for nearly 150 Kansas Professional Engineering examinees on
Friday, April 20, 2007. This is the first of a biannual membership
recruitment event that KSPE hopes to continue well into the future. Each
brown bag, adorned with a KSPE sticker, contained a nutritious and delicious
lunch along with a membership brochure and application. The test takers
expressed sincere appreciation for the much needed replenishment during
their midday break. Hopefully they all scored brilliantly on the exam!
Special Thanks to KSBTP, ELSES, NCEES, NPSE,
Sweet Dreams Catering, Vicki Dressler, Dale Walden, Brandy Johnson, Ed
Thornton, Scott Uhl, Jeff Lolley, and Cory Schoffelman for all their help in
making this a very successful event!
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KSPE Teams Up With KDOT at
Spring Training Workshop
Over sixty KSPE members and KDOT staffers came
together to hone their communication skills at the KSPE Spring Training
Workshop: “Communication Skills for the Professional Engineer:
Presentations, Proposals and Public Relations” on March 23rd in
Topeka.
Both groups benefited from the information
delivered at this meeting. Chris Bohm, KSPE President, said, “I was very
pleased to see the high level of participation of KDOT staff at the KSPE
Spring Training Workshop. There was a wealth of information presented
dealing with communication and presentation skills, and it is these “soft
skills” that help all of us with the practice of engineering.”
Three speakers from KDOT kicked off the seminar
by discussing effective community involvement programs. Julie Lorenz,
Director of Public Affairs, Steve Swartz, Public Information Officer and Ron
Kaufman, Public Involvement Administrator, described ways to involve the
public in new projects. Bill Ebel, City Engineer of Overland Park, then
provided another view of public meetings from a community’s perspective.
Jim McLean, VP Public Affairs, Kansas Health
Institute, then provided the audience with tips on generating favorable
media coverage. McLean and Swartz were both newspaper reporters and editors
and were able to provide first-hand information on how to work with the
media.
The afternoon session on Responding to RFPs and
Marketing Your Services was presented by two HNTB employees: Lew Hanna,
Associate VP and Central Division Sales Manager and Jan Ruemker, Marketing
Team Leader. They reviewed for the attendees how to develop a presentation
strategy and how to communicate the right message effectively.
KSPE will continue to work with KDOT in the
future to develop more training programs. In evaluating the workshop,
Freddie Simmons, P.E., a KDOT consultant that helped plan the workshop,
stated that “the workshop provided excellent information on various types of
communication. Workshops such as this one serve to meet necessary training
needs of our in-house staff as well as our consultant partners.”
Julie Lorenz, Director of Public Affairs,
KDOT
Jan Ruemker, Marketing Team Leader and Lew
Hanna, Associate VP and Central Division Sales Manager, HNTB
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KDOT Secretary Named To National
Research Post
Kansas Secretary of Transportation Deb Miller has been named
the new vice chairwoman of the executive committee of the national
Transportation Research Board. Miller's term begins immediately and will run
through mid-January.
Organized in 1920, the Transportation Research Board (TRB) is
a division of the National Research Council, which serves as an independent
adviser to the federal government and others on scientific and technical
questions of national importance. The National Research Council is jointly
administered by the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of
Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine. The mission of the
Transportation Research Board—one of six major divisions of the National
Research Council—is to promote innovation and progress in transportation
through research. In an objective and interdisciplinary setting, the Board
facilitates the sharing of information on transportation practice and policy
by researchers and practitioners; stimulates research and offers research
management services that promote technical excellence; provides expert
advice on transportation policy and programs; and disseminates research
results broadly and encourages their implementation.
TRB fulfills
this mission through the work of its standing committees and task forces
addressing all modes and aspects of transportation; publication and
dissemination of reports and peer-reviewed technical papers on research
findings; management of cooperative research and other research programs;
conduct of special studies on transportation policy issues at the request of
the U.S. Congress and government agencies; operation of an on-line
computerized file of transportation research information; and the hosting of
an annual meeting that typically attracts 10,000 transportation
professionals from throughout the United States and abroad.
TRB's varied activities annually draw on more than 5,000 engineers,
scientists, and other transportation researchers and practitioners from the
public and private sectors and academia, all of whom contribute their
expertise in the public interest by participating on TRB committees, panels,
and task forces. The program is supported by state transportation
departments, the various administrations of the U.S. Department of
Transportation and other federal agencies, industry associations, and other
organizations and individuals interested in the development of
transportation.
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