GIS Education Weekly: Rich Communities Overrepresented at Princeton

On and Off Campus

Great Lakes Echo: Website tracks balloon debris in the Great Lakes - "Lara O’Brien, a master’s student at the University of Michigan’s School for Environment and Sustainability, created BalloonDebris.org to help citizen scientists track where popular balloon launches end. It maps where the balloons are found and allows people to submit photos of the debris."

Long Beach Post: 11-year-old Nathan Lu is one of the world’s youngest digital cartographers—and he does it by drone - "Nathan [Lu] has covered almost every aspect of Long Beach—from the suburbs to our boats—for the mapping system—which Amanda French, spokesperson for Soar, noted that he was the youngest drone pilot and photographer in their entire database—all with the hopes of eventually beginning his own own real estate drone imaging business."

State of the Planet (CEISIN): Bright Lights, Big Cities: An Intern Takes on the World of Remote Sensing - "Currently a computer science major at Columbia University’s School of General Studies, [Dorothee] Grant helped curate a new dataset that will help to map urban areas at large spatial scales."

Michigan Tech: Hazards Mapping, History and the Future of Rust Belt Cities - "Michigan Technological University researchers have developed a GIS-based model to identify the persistence of industrial hazards in postindustrial cities. Dan Trepal, a postdoctoral researcher and Don Lafrenière, associate professor of geography and GIS, both in the Department of Social Sciences, examined human risk of exposure to environmental hazards in postindustrial London, Ontario, through space and time, but the spatial-temporal model can be applied more widely."

News Press Now: MWSU Geography Club paints playground maps for schools - Student government and a local Lowe's helped with funding for two local elementary schools' maps.

Griffith University: Geography and tech key to sustainable development - "Learning how to use technology and geography for sustainable development was the aim when Griffith University STEM students Martin Juncal and Jacob Breslin travelled to Thailand last month on a scholarship." Griffith University is in Queensland, Australia.

The Daily Iowan: UI’s own Barbara Kagima uses geographic tools to study public health in her home country of Kenya - "University of Iowa Ph.D candidate Barbara Kagima’s preliminary research assessment focuses on the patterns, awareness, and treatment of non-communicable diseases across the country."

The Atlantic: College Students Just Want Normal Libraries - "Schools have been on a mission to reinvent campus libraries—even though students just want the basics."

The Daily Princetonian: Geography is Destiny at Princeton - "Data reveals rich places are overrepresented in student body." This is the first in a series of articles by a senior in geoscience on the geography of the student body.

Awards

Forbes: EthicalGEO Winners Show How We Can Use Geospatial Technology For The Good Of All - Profiles of the winners of the $7500 prizes to pursue further research. I am not sure why the winners are not yet announced at the effort's website, Update: I found the press release (pdf) dated Oct 2 via the AmerGeo website. There's also a press release for each of the seven awardees.

University of Hawaii: Geography graduate honored for grassroots environmental heroism - "A University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa master’s graduate in geography has won the 2019 Goldman Environmental Prize for her tenacious work in trying to protect the oceans around her native Cook Islands. Conservationist Jacqueline “Jacqui” Evans, who earned her MA at the College of Social Sciences in 2006, led a five-year grassroots campaign to protect the stunning marine biodiversity in the Cook Islands."

Resources for Teaching and Learning

The Sports Hub: UMass unveils new basketball court with state map design - "It's clear that there was major attention to detail with the Massachusetts print. The Southwick Jog (the Western Mass-Connecticut border irregularity), the Elizabeth Islands chain off of Falmouth, and Monomoy (off of Chatham) are all included. And they didn't forget Martha's Vineyard or Nantucket, either."

NPR: Grab The Train At Grace Jones, Get Off At Yoko Ono: Exploring NYC's New 'City Of Women' Map - "The lack of women on display sparked the idea behind the “City of Women” map, which renames each of New York’s 424 subway stops after famous women who lived, worked or reveled there. The map was created in 2016 by Solnit and geographer Joshua Jelly-Schapiro, and it was just updated to include more famous women, including Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez."

Foreign Policy: The Geopolitics of Ukraine’s ‘The’ - Why it's no longer "The Ukraine" but "Ukraine." I did not know the role of "the" in geographic names.

Programs and Courses

ASU: New ASU fellowship program addresses urban equity through geographic perspectives - "Over the summer, Arizona State University's School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning invited seven students to participate in the inaugural Urban Equity Initiatives Fellowship Program, where they examined a wide range of issues related to urbanism and inequity."

People

Penn State: For the love of maps and hoops: Geography alumnus excels in basketball analytics - " Kirk Goldsberry never needed an excuse to make maps. The trick was finding ways to combine cartography with his other love — basketball. The Penn State geography alumnus found professional success combining his passions. He is a leader in basketball analytics, having worked as an NBA front office executive and as a writer for ESPN." Cool stuff. I encourage students to see where their passions merge. It can lead to some fun research!

60 Minutes: The modern American farmer - The long running series profiled Beth Ford, the CEO at Land O' Lakes. She did not say this, but I believe it's true: Land O' Lakes used to be a company that made food using a some technology like tractors; now it's a technology company that just happens to make food. Much of that technology is location-based precision agriculture.