GIS Education Weekly: More Geospatial Degrees, More Budget Fights, More Students Doing Service Work

SHNU Geospatial Concentrations

The STEM Journal from Southern New Hampshire University (SNHU, issu format, pages 24-25) this month notes the school's online Bachelor's geospatial concentrations. These are degrees in one of four areas (anthropology, environmental science, geosciences or IT) with a geospatial minor. I found six geospatial courses available. The different degrees require from one to six of the courses.

Rich Schultz ‏(@RSchultzGeoTech), lead online science faculty at SNHU, told me the six courses are the basis for planned geospatial degree and GEOINT programs.

Social Studies/Geography Funding Not Assured in President's Budget

Last year's Every Student Succeeds Act, (ESSA) created new competitive grants to support instruction in civics, economics, geography and history. Last week's release of the President’s budget request did not include requests for some of the new social studies grants.

ESSA is now being passed along to the Appropriations Committee for review, where the funding will be decided. The New Hampshire Geographic Alliance (and I'm sure others) are asking for supporters of geography to contact their representatives and ask that this funding be granted. Via NHGA e-mail, which includes details on who to contact and what to say.

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GIS Education Weekly: New Competency-based Program Coming, Esri ConnectED at 1000 Schools, GISCI and USGIF Partner

SNHU Planning GIS Curriculum

Rich Schultz has noted on LinkedIn the plan for a GIS program at competency-based Southern New Hampshire University starting next fall. Open source will be part of it. Schultz left Elmhurst, a private liberal arts college outside Chicago to join the online program at SNHU last year.

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Amazon Puts Landsat Data on AWS; GIS Firms Use it

The news from Amazon:

You can now access over 85,000 Landsat 8 scenes through our newest Public Data Set: Landsat on AWS. The scenes are all available in the landsat-pds bucket in the Amazon S3 US West (Oregon) region.

Probably more interesting to educators is what Esri, Mapbox, Planet Labs and others have done with the datasets. You'll find what they've built at the bottom of this post.

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GPS Day

GPS Day was March 25 per a press release.

GPS Day is an extension of National Surveyors Week, an initiative focused on key educational achievements and land survey awareness. National Surveyors Week is hosted by the National Society of Professional Surveyors (NSPS) and state surveying societies across the country. Download your National Surveyors Week Resource Kit.

While the date has passed, it's a good idea for GIS classes to consider surveying and vice versa on any available date.

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