Emergency Management GIS Certificate and other Education GIS News

 What's wrong with the geospatial workforce? Victor Valley College (California) adjunct professor Fon Allan Duke  knows:

There’s not a good enough pool of trained individuals to step up and work in these catastrophic events. And the problem you have in industry is either you have people with master’s degrees that are overqualified doing work that they don’t really want to do and you’re overpaying for it, or you have people that have been trained on the job who don’t really understand all the specifics and so you get poor product.

He was quoted as the school launches a new certificate program, moving on from courses focused on geo use in agriculture:

VVC’s new GIS for Emergency Response and Management certificate aims to equip community college students with skills needed to develop GIS tools for governments or private companies. 

There are still openings for the new program which begins the week of Feb 13.

- Victorville Daily Press

The Univeristy of Minnesota has some great, inexpensive courses in LiDAR coming up. Some are full already.

- Montevideo American News

Huntington High (WV) teachers and students attended the White House Science Fair to show off their geospatailly themed project.

Their project involved gathering data about how cloud cover affected the temperature of different surfaces such as pavement and grass, and it captured the attention of NASA. The students were asked last week if they wanted to attend the science fair, hosted by President Barack Obama. They jumped at the chance, and the school system worked hard to make it happen, Sharpe said.

The school is part of the GLOBE program.

- Herald Dispatch

CT School Partners with Chinese School to Study Water Quality and other Education GIS News

Scofield Middle School and a few students and teachers from its sister school , the Middle School Attached to Shandong University, shared a STEM lesson in Stamford this week lookng at the school’s water testing project which uses GIS.

GIS software is similar to Google Earth in that it can display maps, terrain and imagery. According to Hare, however, GIS trumps Google Earth in its ability to display images and incorporate data, such as pH levels of water or quality of plant life. Scofield students and teachers use this technology to research water traits in Bendels Pond and in the Long Island Sound to learn about water pollution and factors that influence it.

- Stamford Patch

The White House Initiative on Historically Black Colleges and Universities launched a new Web site today [Monday Sept 19] that maps every historically black college in the United States. Users can click on a college and see how many degrees it awards each year and how many it needs to award to contribute toward President Obama’s goal of making the country No. 1 in degrees conferred by 2020. 

- Chronicle of Higher Ed

Men's Health ranked the most educated cities in the U.S. Madison, WI was number one. Boston got a B at 21st place. And, no I have no idea why Men's Health would do that other than to sell magazines....but below the scores (A, B, C, etc.) was this:

Understand Your Planet

It's a small world, but maybe not small enough: Only 20 percent of high school seniors have a solid grasp of global geography, according to a new Department of Education report. "If people were more geographically literate, they would better understand political issues," says William Gaudelli, Ed.D., an associate professor of social studies and education at Columbia University. Ask your rep in Congress to back a bill called the Teaching Geography Is Fundamental Act to help fund geography training for schoolteachers.

Nope, I don't know to what report the author points, but it's nice MH likes geography.

- Men's Health

The University of Peshawar (UoP) has launched a new four-year programme of Geomatic (GIS and Remote Sensing) at the Institute of Geography, Urban and Regional Planning in order to prepare students in the filed of Geoinformatics besides providing a stimulating and quality atmosphere to bring positive changes in their approaches.

There's is also a two year masters degree.

- Pakistan Observer