INTRODUCING A NEW PROFESSION: LIGHTING SPECIALIST.

This paper presents the Romanian National Lighting Committee - CNRI - (www.cnri.ro) work of the last two years in order to regulate the lighting industry. It started with the fact that in Romania anyone can make a lighting project, offer etc. In the last five years, lighting has pas through huge transformation and it is not only a technical discipline as it involves design, sustainability, psychology, biology and legislation. So the problem was how to establish a lifelong teaching programme for people with different background. Another issue was about what to teach, what abilities are essentials and how to continue this training after someone receive a diploma. CNRI decided to introduce a new profession: lighting specialist in the list of the Romanian Occupation Classification with two levels: basic and advanced. The minimum level of study is a BA with a total of 120 training hours, from which there are 40 hours of courses for the basic level in two periods separated by two weeks in order to enhance the individual study. One conclusion is the lack of basic lighting knowledge we found in some cases and another is the need to enhance the practical abilities. Another important issue is how to update the lighting knowledge; one solution is the Ingineria Iluminatului - Journal of Lighting Engineering with state-of-the-art papers and another one is a workshop with two invited speakers with an overview of a specific topic. Due to continuous change in lighting technology it is important to set a new profession: lighting specialist and a long life learning programme as a framework to obtain this diploma. The curricula have to be very flexible and it is a continuous quest for teachers with knowledge in state-of-the-art technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]