NALMS Certification Application

College Education

Certification requires at least a four-year undergraduate degree (B.S., B.A. or equivalent) from an accredited college or university. Please use this page to enter the institution(s) you have attended (up to 3). You will also find a link at the end of this application to upload your college transcript(s) along with your other support documents. Note that you may substitute professional experience for course work credit. If you are using experience rather than educational courses, you do not need to upload your college transcript(s). However, we do still request that you fill out this page noting the institution(s) you have attended.

Course Work to Satisfy Education Requirement

Certification requires that you earn at least 6 credits in each of 5 categories and 14 additional credits in one of these categories. Please use the next pages to enter your course work among these 5 categories.

Categories include:

• Water Resources (Lake) Science
• Watershed (Land) Science
• Communications
• Business and Management
• Policy, Legal and Government

We accept course work from accredited colleges or universities at the credit level listed on an official transcript, providing that you received a grade of C or higher. You will find a link at the end of this application to upload your college transcript(s) along with your other support documents. Note: If your course work will not satisfy the education requirement you will have the chance to add NALMS Continuing Education Credits (NCEUs) earned and work experience gained on later pages.

NALMS Continuing Education Units (NCEUs) to Satisfy Education Requirement

Where coursework from a degree program is insufficient to meet the educational requirements above, PCP-approved NCEUs may be substituted. Please use the recertification application form, which allows you to list NCEU-eligible experiences and their corresponding NCEUs. The acceptability of NCEUs and the amount of credit to be awarded is dependent upon a review of supporting documents, such as a detailed course or workshop description, a program/agenda, or a syllabus.

After PCP has approved NCEUs to be used for this purpose, the applicants must partition the approved NCEUs among the five educational categories in the online application system.

There are restrictions on the acquisition and use of NCEUs to meet the 44-credit requirement, including:

• In the Authorship category, no multiple credits are granted for highly identical items of the same type (e.g., multiple publications based on the exact same dataset).
• Publications must be submitted for review.
• >Evidence of service accomplishments (e.g., appointment to an international/national/regional advisory board) must be officially documented.

Experience to Satisfy Education Requirement

When course work and NCEUs are still not enough to meet education requirements you may use your experience. Experience must be relevant and show skill in the education categories where any shortcoming remains. The categories are Water Resources (Lake) Science, Watershed (Land) Science, Communications, Business and Management, and Policy, Legal and Government.

You may find this option helpful if you have vast experience through a lake management career but attended college at a time when current environmental course work did not exist. This option may also help if you have gained your experience through years of running a business or working in an institutional framework.

Please use this page to enter your experience. You must also upload convincing proof that you have used your experience to meet the education requirement and earn credit. You will find a link at the end of this application to upload support documents. Please note it is not enough to simply state the number of years of activity in the field. Rather your support documents should clearly show relevance and competence.

Employment Requirement

A minimum of three years of full-time employment in a position that meets the description of a lake manager is a pre-requisite for further vetting of the quality of the claimed professional experience. Explicit involvement as the leader or a major contributor in the decision-making processes in lake and/or watershed management, where lake/watershed needs are assessed and programs to meet them are developed and/or implemented, is essential. Examples of activities that do NOT qualify as decision-making experience include but are not limited to: supplying general information (e.g., how lake ecosystems work) for stakeholders, collecting and analyzing field data for others who make management decisions, implementing management actions by operating equipment in the field, writing proposals and reports, and applying for permits. These activities may be part of the overall project in which you made management decisions but performing these individual tasks alone does not satisfy the professional experience requirements.

Applicants are solely responsible for cohesively presenting, with appropriate supporting documents, their professional experience in lake management decision-making. Because each lake management career is different, NALMS cannot provide a single template for all applicants. Effective written communication is a critical skill that all CLMs must possess, and the PCP evaluators are not held responsible for mining information from haphazardly uploaded supporting documents.