Chris Grachanen – Education and Training Award 2008
Chris has made many noteworthy contributions to metrology education & training such as his three freeware metrology programs; Tolerance Calculator, Uncertainty Calculator and Mismatch Uncertainty Calculator with users registered in over 50 countries. Numerous examples, on-line help files, operating manuals and hundreds of correspondences have helped users understand the mathematics behind the calculations.
Written Work:
Chris has authored numerous Metrology articles appearing in Quality Progress, Test & Measurement World magazine, NCSLI’s Measure and Cal Lab magazine. Chris authors the Educator's Corner column for NCSLI's quarterly newsletter and is a regular contributor to the American Society for Quality (ASQ), Measurement Quality Division's (MQD) quarterly newsletter The Standard. Chris was a coauthor of ASQ's The Metrology Handbook and received NCSLI's 1998 Dr. Allan V. Astin award for best conference paper outlining experiences learned from laboratory accreditation. In addition Chris was awarded NCSLI 2006 Quality & Management best conference paper for the Metrology Job Description Initiative.
Calibration Classifications and Education:
One of Chris's major metrology training and education efforts was to spearhead the creation of job descriptions for calibration technicians, calibration engineers and Metrologists for inclusion in the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics' Standard Occupational Classification (SOC) listing. The SOC is updated once every ten years and is the foundation for the Bureau's Outlook Occupational Handbook used by educators and counselors to provide career guidance to high school and college students. To this end, Chris chairs the NCSLI 163.1 Working Group on Standard Occupational Classifications which developed formal job descriptions submitted to the SOC and which were recently used in the 2007 NCSLI Benchmarking survey. The working group currently is in correspondence with the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) trying to standardize occupation classifications across government agencies and will be developing standard HR packages for disseminating information about metrology occupations.
Chris has been a regular presenter at NCSLI regional meetings since 1992 as well as presenting at NCSLI's national conferences, ASQ's Measurement Quality Conference and conducting free workshops on measurement uncertainty topics for industry. Chris was one of the founding members of NCSLI’s 164.1 Metrology Education & Training Outreach committee and a major contributor for NCSLI’s newly revised recommended practice on Calibration Procedures RP-3. Chris championed the creation of ASQ's Certified Calibration Technician (CCT) body of knowledge which spanned nearly four years with participation from hundreds of calibration practitioners from the U.S. Dept. of Defense, U.S. Dept. of Energy, NASA, academic institutes, fortune 100 companies and private calibration facilities. The CCT body of knowledge had been the foundation for numerous training courses as well as several outstanding training publications.
Additional Contributions:
In 2004, Chris received a $20,000 cash honorarium for being Test and Measurement World’s Test Engineer of the Year which he donated to several community colleges that offer metrology programs. In addition, Tidewater Community College of Virginia established the National Instruments I Chris Grachanen Metrology Scholarship to attract students into curricula that will prepare them to enter the metrology field.