Florida Region member and Board of Director Bon A. Dewitt was amongst five individuals having been named the 2014 ASPRS Fellow Award winners.  The ASPRS designation of Fellow is conferred on active Society members who have performed exceptional service in advancing the science and use of the mapping sciences (photogrammetry, remote sensing, surveying, geographic information systems, and related disciplines).

The designation of Fellow is awarded for pro-fessional excellence and for service to the Society. Candidates are nominated by other active members, recommended to the Fellows Committee, and elected by the ASPRS Board of Directors. Up to 0.3 percent of the Society’s active members may be elected as Fellows in any one year.  The nominees must have made outstanding contributions in a recognized Society specialization whether in practice, research, development, administration, or education in the mapping sciences. Members of the Fellows Committee and the Executive Committee are ineligible for nomination.  This year’s awards will be given in March at the ASPRS 2014 Annual Conference in Louisville, Kentucky.

Dr. Dewitt has been working as a faculty member in the Geomatics Program at the University of Florida for more than 22 years. He has been teaching undergraduate and graduate level courses in photogrammetry, digital mapping, geodesy, least squares adjustments, hydrographic surveying, subdivision design, route geometrics, as well as other mapping science topics. He has advised dozens of Masters and Doctoral students and supervised research projects that involved, for example, state-wide satellite image classification and GIS analysis, determination of ordinary high water lines using remote sensing, and the utilization of unmanned autonomous aerial vehicles for mapping applications. The University of Florida recognized his instructional aptitude by presenting him with two of the coveted “Teaching Improvement Program” Awards, in 1994 and again in 1999. He has also served as the faculty advisor of the ASPRS Student Chapter at the University of Florida for the past 19 years. He continues to encourage students to join the Society as student members and has been a Member Champion several times.

Dr. Dewitt has contributed significantly to the mapping science community in the state of Florida and nationally through many professional continuing education seminars. He has been involved in writing and quality-checking exam questions in the subjects of surveying and photogrammetry for the NCEES. He has also served as a private consultant and expert witness in numerous court cases involving forensic photogrammetry.

Dr. Dewitt started his ASPRS (ASP) services as a student member in 1981, becoming an ASPRS active member in 1989 after completing his Ph.D. Beginning with his election in 1993, Dr. Dewitt has served the Florida Region of ASPRS for over 18 years, first as a Region Director and currently as the Secretary/Treasurer. He also served on the Program Committee for two national ASPRS annual conferences – once in 1998 as the Student Volunteer Coordinator and once in 2007 as the Technical Program Coordinator.  Dr. Dewitt regularly serves as a manuscript reviewer for the Photogrammetric Engineering and Remote Sensing Journal as well as other journals in the field.  Dr. Dewitt was the author/co-author of many scientific research papers in the digital mapping and photogrammetry fields.

He is co-author with Dr. Paul Wolf of ‘Elements of Photogrammetry – With Applications in GIS,’ which is one of the most widely used photogrammetry textbooks, both in the U.S. and throughout the world.

Dr. Dewitt has received several ASPRS awards during his professional career.  As a graduate student, he received the Bausch and Lomb Photogrammetric Award (1981) and the Wild Heerbrugg Photogrammetric Fellowship Award (1982).  In 1996, he received an ASPRS merit award, and in the same year he received the Intergraph award as a co-author for best scientific paper in spatial data standards. In 2001, he received the President’s Award from the Florida Surveying and Mapping Society.

Please join the Florida Region Board of Directors in congratulating Dr. Dewitt in this crowning achievement!