May 2006 ISSUE
The Five Requirements of Professional Licensure
Editor’s Note: Following is the second article in a series on the roles, policies and other work of the APEGGA Board of Examiners.
The APEGGA Board of Examiners has the ultimate say in deciding when an applicant qualifies as a professional member of APEGGA and what needs to be done to meet APEGGA’s requirements. This is not a group of paid staff — it is a statutory group of more than 40 volunteers and three public members, and it is one of the key components in self-regulation.
Its job is to ensure that applicants meet standards set to protect the public interest. This is done for each of the 4,000 to 5,000 applications expected to come through APEGGA’s doors in 2006. The board strives, however, to be as flexible as possible to make sure people qualified for licensure do, indeed, end up on the register.
In this article, we’ll briefly outline the five requirements for licensure.
Academics. All successful registrants must have the proper grounding in academic education to be a professional engineer or geoscientist in Alberta.
The most direct route is from a nationally accredited Canadian engineering program. Accreditation is handled by the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board, and graduates of accredited programs do not need to confirm their education through exams.
There is no accreditation system for geology and geophysics, however. There are APEGGA geology and geophysics syllabi based on Canadian national geoscience academic standards, and Canadian-educated grads have their academics compared to them.
Some Canadian-educated geoscience applicants may be required to complete
technical exams or courses if they did not take equivalent courses as part of
their academic training. However, the board of examiners will use acceptable
experience to reduce or eliminate assessed technical examinations.
Proving academics becomes more complicated when applicants were educated in other
countries. If applicants are from a country with which Canada has a mutual recognition
agreement, the Board of Examiners will likely accept the applicant’s education.
If someone has a listed international undergraduate degree, APEGGA will initially assign some technical confirmatory exams. However, the Board of Examiners will assess the overall qualifications of the applicant and will look for a basis for waiving those exams. Applicants who come from non-listed programs will be assigned additional confirmatory exams.
The Board of Examiners may waive examinations on two bases. A master’s degree or PhD from an accredited Canadian program or from a mutual recognition country may result in waiving of exams. Similarly, additional experience beyond the minimum required may also result in waiving or reducing exams.
It is also possible for individuals with non-usual educational paths — typically other science degrees or technical school educations — to become licensed as professional members. For these applicants, supplemental technical exams or courses are assigned so the applicant can meet the academics requirement.
Experience. All successful registrants must have at least four years of experience, including at least one year of North American-equivalent experience.
Canadian grads working in Canada get this training as members in training. Successful professionals from other countries, however, often can’t join the register right away because they need that one year of experience.
Why is it important? Professionals registered by APEGGA need experience in such areas as Canadian codes and standards, business practices, climatic conditions, ethics and culture before independently practicing without supervision.
Professional Practice Exam. Every APEGGA professional must have passed the PPX. It tests legal, ethical and professional concepts.These are not technical questions. And succeeding isn’t about memorizing numbers or pat answers. Rather, successful PPX writers show that they understand how the concepts work, what they mean and why they are important.
English-language competency. All successful applicants have demonstrated they have an adequate working knowledge of the English language. In some cases, a combination of written work and references is enough. In other cases, a minimum score must be met on the standardized Test of English as a Foreign Language.
Good character and reputation. You must be of good character and reputation to become an APEGGA member. Good character is about moral and ethical strength and includes integrity, candor, honesty and trustworthiness.
Character is what a person is. Reputation is what others believe a person is. Both are important in the professional realm.
The Whole Person. While each of these five requirements is critical, the board is as understanding and flexible as possible in interpreting them, because of the many individual paths that lead to an application.