Monday, August 10, 2015

And then there were two ...

Peter Brigden, ACE-I
ESA would like to congratulate Peter Brigden of Rapid Solutions in Queensland, Australia on being the second person in the world to earn the Associate Certified Entomologist-International (ACE-I) designation.

Having been launched at PestWorld in 2014, the ACE-I is a new and international version of the ACE program. The first ACE-I, Kenneth Leung (Hong Kong), passed his exams in February of 2015 and --though others have attempted it-- Peter is only the second person in the world to pass both of the ACE-I exams. The ACE-I program differs from the ACE program in several key respects, including the fact that applicants are required to take and pass two exams (One on Core entomology and pest management/IPM skills; and another on pesticide knowledge and safety) instead of just one for the US version of the ACE program.

"Getting ACE-certified serves as confirmation that as a professional trainer in the Australian Pest Management Industry, that I ‘know my stuff’," Brigden recently told the ESA staff. It also served as a personal challenge to get a qualification of international standing for the industry and --if it challenges others, like it seems to in the USA-- then that is a good thing because we need to stretch ourselves mentally from time to time. ACE also served as a professional marker because as a trainer I need to continually develop my professional standards in both training (teaching) and industry knowledge (pest management) and for the latter, ACE-I does that in a most unequivocal manner."

Hear Peter speak on August at the 2015 Rapid Risk Management Conference, August 14-15, on the Gold Coast in Queensland, Australia.