Dave Bickel

1. Registration for North Dakota Geoscientists under aNorth Dakota Board of Registration for Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors and Geologists. Dave Bickel

2. Who started this? • David Bickel • Dennis James • Keith Johnson • Milton Lindvig • Gary Arman • Cliff Keller • North Dakota State Board of Registration for Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors

3. Why Registration? • To protect life, property, health, safety, public welfare, and the environment through the regulation of the practice of geology. • To define the practice of geology as a profession and to establish minimum professional standards for ethical conduct, professional responsibility, education, and experience. • To prevent abuses of the practice of geology by untrained or unprincipled persons. • The intent of this chapter is to ensure that only those persons who are registered and licensed pursuant to this chapter, unless they are exempted from licensing, shall publicly practice, offer, or attempt to publicly practice geology or any specialty thereof, claim any specialty in geology as a professional, business, or commercial identification, title, name, representation, or claim, or otherwise hold themselves out to the public as being qualified to practice geology or any of its specialties. Only those persons licensed pursuant to this chapter may use the term "licensed professional geologist." • (Alabama Acts 1995, No. 95-399, p. 820, §2.)

4. More on need • Registration provides assurance of record that an individual has the minimum qualifications to function independent of technical guidance as a competent professional so that a certain level of quality can be expected in their work. • The employer of geologic services must now rely on references, recommendations and similar personnel information for selecting a professional. Some entities lack the resources, contacts or technical background to effectively screen consultants or subcontractors. • The target audience for a professional’s work seldom has meaningful assurance of an individual’s qualifications to provide geologic information in the absence of registration • Legislative and regulatory actions taken to protect public welfare or the environment often fail to identify professionals with the skills needed to effectively address the targeted concerns. • The geologic community in North Dakota needs an organization to watch its interests in such matters and provide a voice for these interests.

5. Registration – quick summary • 29 states have Geologist registration laws • 25 use the national standardized examination of Association of State Boards of Geology (ASBOG). • 12 are combined or have agreements with engineer boards. Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and New Hampshire have geologists and engineers combined into one statute. The remaining 9 states have geologists and engineers combined into umbrella boards of professional registration. • 5 other states only have legal definitions of geologists or use nationally recognized certifications to regulate geologic practice.

7. The Plan for North Dakota • High degree of compatibility between geological registration laws in the United States and the existing rules and regulations governing the registration of Professional Engineers and Land Surveyors in North Dakota. • Graduation with a baccalaureate or higher degree from a geosciences curriculum with a minimum of 30 semester or 45 quarter hours of credit in geology, mineralogy, geophysics, geochemistry, hydrology, environmental geology, engineering geology or close equivalents fully approved by a nationally recognized higher education accrediting association. (after PA Ch. 37.1, 37.36(1)(i)) • Registration by examination: Written examination prepared and maintained by the National Association of State Boards of Geology (ASBOG) • Registration by Grandfather provision: An applicant who has completed the experience requirements of registration as a professional geoscientist and who holds a baccalaureate degree, not necessarily with a geosciences curriculum, from an institution of higher learning fully approved by a nationally recognized accrediting association by (date, effective date of amendment), may be granted registration until (date, 1 year from effective date) without examination. • A minimum of four years experience prior to writing the examination. Up to a maximum of two years of postgraduate education in a geosciences curriculum may count as work experience with a Masters degree being equivalent to one year and a Doctoral degree equivalent to two years of acceptable experience. • Applicants not meeting the educational requirements must have a minimum of 12 years of experience in professional geological work prior to writing the examination for Professional Geoscientist. Up to 6 years of experience for successfully completed courses in a geosciences curriculum and nationally recognized in-service training in geosciences. • Many details will need to be addressed. Renewal periods and requirements, continuing education, and exempt specialties or occupation groups. States address many of the details of registration and board operations in different ways. For example, some states exempt academicians or certain industries, such as petroleum, others exclude government employees, and one state, Alabama, exempts no one from registration for the professional practice of geology.

8. Association of State Boards of Geology

9. The Most Important Registration Task In North Dakota (last month’s discussion) • Engineers Board must communicate the Geologist registration concept to its constituents North Dakota Society of Professional Engineers, North Dakota Society of Professional Land Surveyors, North Dakota Consulting Engineers Council. • The geologic community must identify every geoscientist in North Dakota, and other individuals who feel they may be impacted by a registration requirement and communicate the concept to them, and address any unforeseen impacts that may occur to individuals . • This objective parallels the North Dakota Geological Society’s goal of inventorying the communicating with the geoscientists in the state.