Category Archives: higher education

new Spatial Literacy classes to be offered online

Posted on March 17, 2011 | Leave a comment

The University of Redlands intends to offer its new courses in spatial literacy for educators (pdf) online, maybe as early as September 2011! We’re very excited about this program, one that we launched in 2010. Contact me if you want to learn more about the program or its individual classes, or how to sign up!

Leave a comment

Posted in education, higher education, Redlands, spatial thinking

bringing GIS into the geosciences at Hamilton College

Posted on February 20, 2011 | Leave a comment

Sean Connin at NITLE interviewed Barb Tewksbury, a geologist at Hamilton, on how her department has integrated GIS and spatial analysis into the curriculum.

Barb is also deeply involved in the On The Cutting Edge project for faculty professional development, and Chris can vouch for the excellent work they do. Cutting Edge maintains resources for GIS and remote sensing instruction.

(Thanks for the call out, Barb.)

Leave a comment

Posted in education, GIS, higher education

Part 2, Julio Rivera on geography and spatial thinking at Carthage College

Posted on February 20, 2011 | Leave a comment

Here’s the 2nd part of NITLE’s podcast interview with Julio Rivera, the geographer at Carthage College who’s now their provost. Well worth a listen for his thoughts on spatial learning.

Leave a comment

Posted in geography, GIS, higher education, spatial thinking

GIS at DePauw – model of how it can be done at a small college

Posted on February 3, 2011 | Leave a comment

I like this narrative history of how GIS can be integrated and supported on a small college campus. The investment that DePauw has made in its curriculum, personnel, and other resources is clearing paying off! For anyone interested in more about the how their MAGIS program runs, there’s a chapter from its directors (Foss and Schindler) in my 2006 book, Understanding Place: Mapping and GIS across the Curriculum. Both are faculty of classics/archaeology at DePauw.

Leave a comment

Posted in GIS, higher education

Geographical Thinking and GIS at Lib Arts Colleges

Posted on November 4, 2010 | Leave a comment

NITLE has just posted part 1 of its interview with Julio Rivera from Carthage College. I first met Julio several years ago when we coordinated a presentation/workshop on GIS at a Council on Undergraduate Research meeting; he’s very involved with and supportive of CUR.

In this podcast he reflects on what it means to “think like a geographer” and mentions observing patterns and finding connections in space and place. He started Carthage’s GIS program in 1997 (same year I started Alfred University’s) and comments on the paucity of GIS at lib arts colleges back then. Right, so few lib arts colleges have geography departments (though some that did were in fact already going great things with GIS, like at Middlebury). It was really in the late 1990s and early 2000’s that GIS exploded into other departments at lib arts (env studies, geology, etc.).

I liked how he linked his own growing up in a mix of urban/suburban areas as motivation to research residential choices, and left him with a lifelong value of kids “roaming.” Long live the free range child.

We need more geographers to become administrators!

Leave a comment

Posted in geography, higher education, spatial thinking