Featured Alumni

Tim Tjosvold

Six years ago, Tim Tjosvold, now 48, found himself at a career crossroads. Owners of the St. Paul firm where he worked as a mechanical designer and draftsman announced that the company would be shut down in three months.

Instead of searching for a new job in the same field, Tjosvold chose to step out of his comfort zone and head back to school. "When I was coming out of high school, I was debating between a career in drafting or civil design," says Tjosvold, who was born in Granite Falls but grew up in North St. Paul. "I still had an interest in surveying and civil design, but as you get into your career, get married, and buy a home, it's harder to make changes. So when I lost my job, even though I was nervous about paying the mortgage, I thought, well, maybe now is my chance to make a career change."

Good call. In the fall of 2003, Tjosvold enrolled at Saint Paul College, the only Twin Cities metro–area educational institution with a geomatics program. In a nutshell, geomatics deals with the science, art, and technology of locating relative positions on, above, or below the earth's surface. Students learn land surveying procedures, theory, and computations; prepare maps and site plans; and use surveying instruments. The College's program includes site design, hydrology, and a focus on mapping (cartography) and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Graduates can look forward to working in such fields as government, engineering, consulting, and land development.

Saint Paul College offers a 60–credit Geomatics and Mapping Sciences AS degree as well as a 30–credit Geomatics Advanced Technical Certificate, which shares the same core classes as the AS degree. "Geomatics is an expanding program in the land surveying technology area that utilizes state–of–the–art GPS [Global Positioning Systems] electronics and software with new sophisticated surveying equipment," notes Dr. Gary Hertel, dean of the College's Trades and Technical Education division. "The demand for graduates of this program has remained steady and is increasing. Our expectations for growth and opportunities for its graduates are very high."

The name of the program was changed from Land Surveying to Geomatics in 2000 because of technological advancements. "When I started out in the field, we measured distances with steel tapes and measured angles with transits (or theodolites)," says Geomatics Instructor Tom Arneson. "Now we do both of those electronically with an instrument called a total station. A total station sits on a tripod like the surveying instruments before it, but it has a built–in computer and accurately measures angles and distances simultaneously. Surveyors used to have to write down numbers in field books and transcribe them later into other systems, but that's all automated now. Survey–grade GPS receivers are also used; they locate points using signals from satellites."

Drawing a new map

Tjosvold was both excited and apprehensive on his first day at the College. "It was a little unnerving going back to school at 43 years old," he admits. "Would I fit in? Was I going to be able to understand the material, get good grades, and keep up with a bunch of younger students?"

He needn't have worried. "There were many nontraditional students at Saint Paul College," he says. "It was nice to see that I wasn't the only one who was making a career change. And it was comforting to see that I wasn't the oldest person in class by any means."

After graduating in the spring of 2005, Tjosvold was immediately hired by the Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) to do road design and construction inspection during the summer. Fourteen months later, he transferred to Mn/DOT's Survey Department in Owatonna. Four months after that, he accepted an offer from the Dakota County Surveyor's Office to work as a senior survey technician in Apple Valley. His duties include drawing right–of–way maps, checking plats (maps drawn to scale that show the divisions of a piece of land), and answering survey questions from the general public.

Tjosvold enjoys his new job and plans on staying put for quite a while. What's more, if he were to map out his career path again, he wouldn't change a thing. "If I hadn’t gone to school and learned the different software applications and the PLS [Public Land Survey] system, there's no way I could do the job I'm doing today," he says. "The education I received at Saint Paul College definitely enabled me to do what I'm now doing for a very rewarding career."

Phil Bolsta is a Blaine'based freelance writer.