Fellow me

I would like to thank the Academy, er, the Executive Council of the Association of Canadian Ergonomists for designating me a Fellow of the Association at the 2011 Annual Meeting.

As a recent grad and young Council member, lo those many years, I remember compiling information about Fellowship as a possible new category of membership. It never occurred to me that one day I might join that category.

After all, honours and awards are not so much about receiving them as they are about deserving them. That said, I am very grateful to have been recognized.

What does Fellowship mean, really? It is a status typically awarded for service or achievement or both to the Association, the profession, or both. Does that mean one has nothing more to prove? Or that much more to prove?

I had many opportunities to participate in Association governance in the first 5-10 years after graduation, gained a great deal of benefit from it, thus I generally tend to tend to demur from that type of volunteer role and prefer to give that opportunity to those who are in an early career position. However, I do see an active duty to keep up service as a peer reviewer, submit papers to Annual Conferences at least every couple of years, refer students to the Association, and promote the profession to end users and young students alike.

As an academic, I have a lot of opportunities to push knowledge toward new applications, and as my associates know, a lot of that is related to human factors in amusement, as well as recreation and entertainment, but at the big picture level, it focuses on authenticity of modelling complex systems whatever those systems are. You can’t do ergonomics experiments with fruit flies, and control every variable but the treatment one. Our work with modelling sign language interpreting, for example, for the first time brings linguistic processing into the model of physical work, going beyond past studies that just looked at movement and self-reported “stress”. The take home message is that it is legitimate work to ride a roller coaster if you want to know what the rider experiences, although I won’t apologize for enjoying it!

Expertise in Human Factors and Ergonomics continues to be scarce in Canada, while the consumer awareness of related buzzwords continues to grow. This creates a dangerous atmosphere where people with limited or no qualifications can make claims and even sell advice without competition from people with adequate qualifications. Whenever I present an introductory workshop, I always open with the information that certification in ergonomics in Canada requires 700 hours of specific coursework. In one or two hours, hopefully a participate will know that they want to study more–or perhaps want to hire a certified consultant!

I can’t say enough about how fascinating and diverse the opportunities are within this field, and while there is no end to the questions that need to be answered, there is also endless knowledge transfer work still to be done, to make people aware of human engineering principles. I am honoured to be a Fellow of my Fellows, and have nothing but encouragement for those who are looking at their careers from where I was when I first heard about Fellows. Keep going!