APEGGA

To serve society and protect the public by regulating, enhancing and providing leadership in the practice of the professions of engineering, geology and geophysics - APEGGA's Mission Statement

Brought into being by the Alberta Parliament's 1920 Engineering, Geological and Geophysical Professions Act, APEGGA is responsible for ensuring the safety of the public by ensuring that all people claiming to be an Engineer, Geologist, or Geophysicists are properly trained. It also must ensure that those who do have the proper education to practice these professions in Alberta, do so according to certain standards and a Code of Ethics.

Membership in APEGGA is one of the requirements to legally claim to be a professional in one of those three fields. If you do something like putting P.Eng., P.Geol., or P.Geoph. on your business cards without being an APEGGA member, they can haul your ass into court.

Its affairs are directed by a council consisting of 16 members elected by the members of APPEGA, and 3 people appointed by the Government of Alberta. APEGGA's affairs fall under the portfolio of the Minister of Infrastructure.

APEGGA currently has about 36,000 members, not shocking for a province which has the highest number of Engineers per capita in Canada, and an extensive amount of oil development, which would require a number of geologists and geophysicists.

APEGGA deals closely with the Universities of Alberta and Calgary, which are the only two institutions of higher learning which are currently accredited to grant degrees in those three areas.

It is of course APEGGA which chooses what courses are required learning, to make sure that everyone graduating is (supposedly) technically competent.

They also run the APEGGA Student Advantage Program (ASAP), which as far as I can tell doesn't really do much except get you invited to a few student / industry mixers, and a free subscription to The PEGG, their newsletter. More on that later. I signed up for the free coffee mug they were giving out. I have no idea where it is now though. *mutter* Oh yeah, and there's a few scholarships too.

They also run the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer, during which 4th year Engineering Students are presented with an Iron Ring, in a ceremony which is supposed to instil in them a feeling responsibility for insuring the safety of the public.

As mentioned earlier, they also publish the PEGG, a cool little newspaper distributed monthly, usually having some interesting reports of funky new technology, plus some boring stuff about regulations or court cases going after people who stick "Engineer" on their business cards when they really shouldn't. It's also got a career section with a few job listings.

They also publish an annual salary survey, a fairly useful collection of data from almost 7,000 people, giving funky stuff like mean, median, quartile averages, and stuff like that for a variety of fields.

In addition to all this stuff, they put on a number of seminars and the like. I can't really say much about those, as I haven't attended one yet.