University Consortium for Geographic Information Science
319 C Street, SE
Washington, DC 20003
202-544-1419 (phone), 202-544-1348 (fax)
execdir@ucgis.org
www.ucgis.org
Our Mission

Fall/Winter 1998-'99 Headlines
Vol. 1, No. 1

UCGIS Welcomes New Members!

4 regular and 3 affiliate

Greg Elmes Takes the Helm as New UCGIS President

His vision for 1999

UCGIS Announces Board Election Results

William Huxhold, VP and President-elect
New board members are Barbara Buttenfield, Robert Rugg, & Donald Myers

Tackling Congress in 1999...

Plans from the Policy Committee

UCGIS Summer Assemblies

1999: Ideas for Minneapolis
2000: hosted by Oregon State, slopes of Mt. Hood near Portland, June 21-25

Societies Explore Geographic Information Science Education Issues

News from the Education Summit at GIS/LIS in Fort Worth
Status of the Model Curriculum

UCGIS Virtual Seminar a Success

35 students on five UCGIS campuses, at least 70 participants total nationwide

Research Challenges to be Featured in New Book

contact Bob McMaster for info. (mcmaster@atlas.sosci.umn.edu)

Please Submit Articles!

to the FGDC Newsletter...
to the "Academic Pursuits" column of Geo Info Systems...

New Report of UCGIS Policy & Legislation Committee Available

Go to http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/ucgis/policy.html

Listserv Lunacy No More

moderator, new software to prevent "spams" on UCGIS lists

UCGIS Welcomes New Members
by Tom Palmerlee and Carolyn Merry

At the UCGIS Council meeting on November 9 in Fort Worth, TX, the UCGIS admitted four new regular members and three new affiliate members from the private sector. The Universities of Iowa and Kansas are major public research universities, members of the prestigious Association of American Universities, with established strengths and doctoral programs in GI Science and related areas. Ohio GIS Net with eight member universities is the second regional consortium of smaller institutions to join UCGI

The fourth new full member is the University of Texas at Dallas, where GIS activities are focussed in the social and environmental sciences. The three new corporate Affiliate members also provide a spectrum of firm types. Oracle and SUN need little introduction. Oracle Corporation is the world's second largest software company, with a very active spatial research and development group. SUN Microsystems is a major hardware and software company with a long history of involvement in GIS. Pacific Meridian Resources is a more specialized remote sensing and GIS company (75 employees) involved in remote sensing and GIS research and training, with a focus on environmental applications. More information on each of the new members can be found at http://www.ucgis.org/fMembers.html.

With the addition of these members, UCGIS now has 61 members, including 7 affiliate members from the private sector. The next due date for new member applications is April 30 for June 1999 admission, and details on the application procedure may be found on the UCGIS web site, http://www.ucgis.org.

Greg Elmes of WVU is the new UCGIS President
by Tom Palmerlee and Greg Elmes

Greg Elmes of West Virginia University took over as President of the UCGIS at the UCGIS Council meeting on November 9 in Fort Worth, TX. The past-president of UCGIS is David Mark of SUNY-Buffalo. Greg outlined UCGIS priorities for his 1999 term, based on the Strategic Plan adopted last summer.

"We must remember that the living roots of UCGIS are its member institutions. Without essential and critical levels of intra-university activities, UCGIS will not prosper. Therefore I will seek ways to strengthen UCGIS functions within our member institutions and to share successful models across all our membership."

UCGIS Announces Board Election Results
by Tom Palmerlee

William E. Huxhold was elected as Vice President and President-Elect of University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) by the Council on November 9. Huxhold, professor in the Department of Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee pledged "to continue the tradition of heard work, vision and dedication to the previous UCGIS leaders and members who achieved the great progress in a few short years." Huxhold is the author of several textbooks on GIS including " Huxhold will be joined by other new Board members:

Barbara Buttenfield, University of Colorado, Department of Geography

Robert Rugg, Virginia Commonwealth University, Urban Studies and Planning Department

Donald Myers, University of Arizona, Mathematics Department

New UCGIS President Greg Elmes of West Virginia University expressed pleasure that the new members represent different professions demonstrating the UCGIS commitment to foster multidisciplinary research and education in geographic information science.

Tackling Congress in 1999
by Tom Palmerlee and Harlan Onsrud

In 1999 the Policy & Legislation Committee, which organized a very successful Congressional Breakfast last April, will focus on joint activities with other organizations with GIS concerns, one goal being to support initiatives that are already underway. In particular we are looking forward to congressional activities associated with the Geodata Policy Form to be held June 7- 9, 1999 in Washington, D.C. Contact the Policy & Legislation Committee chair, Harlan Onsrud (onsrud@spatial.maine.edu) for more information.

UCGIS Summer Assemblies
by Tom Palmerlee, Bob McMaster, and Richard Wright

The Summer Assembly in Minneapolis, June 24-26, 1999 will examine the intersection of the existing UCGIS research and education challenges with major GIScience application areas. Four items that could be accomplished at the Minneapolis meeting include:

Time for "adjustments" to the basic research challenges.
Minisymposium on "Prospects for a Science of Geographic Information".
Discussion of application challenges in GIS.
Some type of relationship with the GIS-SOC (GIS and Society) meeting.

The education component of the meeting may include three possibilities:

model Curriculum
education aspects of GIScience applications
status of GIScience education challenges

The registration fee for delegates is to be set at a break even point ($125). Additional people from member institutions, if they register early will be charged $215 (with a penalty of $315 for late registration). The non-members rate will be $200 more than the members rate. Students fee can register for $125. No UCGIS monies have been budgeted to subsidize the 1999 summer assembly.

The Millennium Summer Assembly is planned for June 21-25, 2000 at the "Resort at the Mountain" in Oregon (45 minutes east of Portland). A meeting program has not yet been planned but you can go http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/resort to see the proposal submitted by Oregon State and a description of the venue.

Societies Explore GIScience Education Issues
by Tom Palmerlee

"GIS is not the same in different professions," observed Karen Kemp of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) Education Committee and, with Richard Wright, facilitator of the Geographic Information Summit at the GIS/LIS Conference in Fort Worth on Nov. 11, 1998. "What needs to be learned varies substantially across disciplines. Marketing and sales people who need to gain spatial literacy, do not need the hardcore computer engineering skills of the high end GIS programmer; GIS savvy ecologists need to know about building simulation models with GIS while GIS data managers in local governments likely do not." Twelve professional and educational organizations as well as government coordinating bodies prepared position papers before the Summit and participated in presentations and lively discussions. The position papers and summary of the discussion are available on the web at http://www.ucgis.org, under the "Events" and "Education" links.

The presentations and discussions demonstrate a very broad interest and concern about GIS education across a wide spectrum of application areas. "It is clear that current efforts to prepare students and professionals for this evolving and expanding workplace are inadequate." said facilitator Richard Wright.

Issues raised included:

Who is responsible for educating this expanding and evolving next generation workforce? How do we address the educational needs of both new and existing employees?
Who is responsible for training graduates in the operation of specific software? Should this be done by private sector employers, leaving "education" to the universities? But what about small businesses and local governments, how can they afford to take on the training role?
Where should GIS positions be placed within personnel structures?
If we educate our students to become full geographic information scientists, encompassing all the components of computer science, geography and business management discussed, how can small businesses and local governments afford to employ them?
How can we get incoming students to think about learning geography no matter what their home discipline is?
How can we raise the level of what is taught in introductory GIS courses in order to ensure that students taking only one course in GIS learn something useful? Should these introductory courses have prerequisites such as spatial literacy, computer programming, and/or database design?
How can university educators deal with the inevitable intra-university turf wars which will arise as GIS becomes diffused across campuses?

This opportunity to discuss education issues among stakeholder groups representing many professions. In future discussion of education needs, defining the educational targets is essential. The different types of GIS professions and their necessary qualifications and education must be clarified. Similar kinds of cross- disciplinary education debates in other professional fields serving very diverse populations (such as Wetland Science, Computer Science and Statistics) may provide models for consideration by the GIS community as we being to seek resolution of these issues.

Three opportunities are available for further clarification of educational needs of professions.

UCGIS's Model Curriculum Project seeks to develop a model, multi—path curriculum for GIScience. This curriculum will lay out a number of paths corresponding to those most likely to be required by students involved with GIScience at various levels of involvement and will identify the specific knowledge components that need to be associated with each path. Opportunities for review and discussion of this Curriculum will be provided to the entire GIS community as it evolves.
A proposed "Education Consortium in GIScience" is intended to provide an organization parallel to UCGIS with a concentration on education issues and the involvement of the entire GIS education community. All the organizations represented at this summit should be encouraged to become major players in this new consortium.
Another in the continuing series of GIS Education conferences is currently being proposed to be held in the Los Angeles area in November 1999. Again, this meeting would provide an excellent opportunity for continued discussion of the issues raised at this meeting.

Participating organizations aside from UCGIS were: the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS), the Association of American Geographers (AAG), the Federal Geographic Data Committee (FGDC), the Geospatial Information & Technology Association (GITA), the Management Association for Private Photogrammetic Surveyors (MAPPS), the National Imagery and Mapping Agency (NIMA), the National States Geographic Information Council (NSGIC), the Open GIS Consortium, Inc. (OGC), and the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA).

UCGIS anticipates helping to make the 1998 Education Summit the first such annual event at which the entire GIS community can discuss education issues.

UCGIS Virtual Seminar a Success
by Dawn Wright

During the fall term of 1998, five institutions of the UCGIS held a simultaneous "virtual" graduate seminar completely online, using the Allaire Forums web-conferencing/threaded discussion software. The seminar focused discussion on five of the UCGIS research challenges. Patterned after the initial UCGIS Virtual Seminar in 1997, it provided a unique opportunity for students and faculty to interact with one another, thereby gaining broader views on "hot," theoretical questions, fresher perspectives, and exposure to different academic backgrounds. Discussion leaders and topics were:

Art Getis (San Diego State), "Spatial Analysis"
Lynn Usery (U of Georgia (semesters), "Extensions to Geographic Representation"
Dawn Wright (Oregon State), "Distributed Computing"
Bob McMaster (U of Minnesota), "GIS & Society"
Nina Lam (LSU), "Scale"

Thirty-five students were officially registered for graduate credit on the five campuses, and there were an additional 35 people who logged in at various times in order to observe the discussions. Registered students were expected to read and critique the UCGIS white papers for the topics, to expand their reading for selected themes, to contribute to the online discussion forums, and to participate in classroom discussions. Structuring of the classroom component of the seminar varied on different campuses: for some the virtual seminar was a 1-credit course in itself, and for others it was part of a larger 3-credit course. Some students made their entire terms papers available in the virtual forum.

An added dimension of the course was the convening of a well-attended panel at GIS/LIS in Fort Worth, November 10-12 to:

allow for a mid-term evaluation of the seminar, particularly with regard to what might be missing from the course at that point in terms of content.
give participating students an opportunity to discuss the pros and cons of taking part in such a unique learning setting as the virtual seminar.
allow students to report on their progress in the course.
give students and faculty an opportunity to meet one another in person.

Dawn Wright served as moderator and the student panelists were:
Kurt Johnson of LSU
Jay Raiford of LSU
Deana Pennington of Oregon State
Jim Nichols of U of Minnesota
Nina Lam and Bob McMaster participated in audience discussions.

Most of the students gave the seminar a positive evaluation and would participate in a similar course again. A full evaluation of the effort is still in progress and an article about the seminar will appear in the March issue of Geo Info Systems ("Academic Pursuits"). A preliminary assessment of the course is that the replication of a traditional academic session in a non-traditional, virtual format may be selling the technology short. Virtual seminars have great potential for engaging interaction with worldwide experts who would otherwise never be able to participate (e.g., real-time online chats or videoconferencing with a "guest speaker" from India, Australia, etc.).

You may reach the virtual seminar from the UCGIS web site or directly at http://dusk.geo.orst.edu/virtual. Archives of the discussions and term papers are available there for download.

Solicitations of Articles
by Kimberly Burns-Braidlow and Dawn Wright

FGDC Newsletter

It's that time again when the FGDC Secretariat is seeking newsworthy articles of the happenings in your subcommittee, working group, agency or organization for the FGDC Newsletter.

Guidance for submitting topics for the FGDC Newsletter:
Individuals representing their respective organizations are invited to submit topics for potential inclusion for the Spring FGDC Newsletter. Please submit:

Article topic
Brief statement explaining the topic
(Optional) Any background information that is easily at hand
Contact information

The FGDC Secretariat has contracted with Rebecca Somers of Somers-St. Clair, Inc. to write the FGDC Spring Newsletter. She will contact individuals for required information. It is not necessary for you to draft text for articles. However, if you do have text to submit it will be welcomed.

Topics will be placed in the FGDC Newsletter based on relevance and applicability to NSDI and FGDC activities, and considerations of space and timeliness.

Please note the newsletter schedule. The goal for the Spring 1999 Newsletter is for it to be in the hands of the readers one month prior to the FGDC sponsored GeoData Forum (Washington, D.C., June 7-9, 1999).
January 4, 1999. Last date for candidate article topic suggestions to David Painter.
January 22, 1999. The last date for providing information to Rebecca Somers for inclusion in the Newsletter.
February 8 - 12. Review draft newsletter by FGDC staff (contact for some articles maybe required for review of relevant text).

David Painter will contact submitters on the status of their article suggestions once outline has been approved. Please submit topic information to:

David Painter
FGDC Secretariat
MS 590 USGS National Center
Reston, Virginia 220192
dpainter@usgs.gov
v: 703.648.5513
f: 703.648.5755

Geo Info Systems

UCGIS continues to enjoy a fruitful partnership with Geo Info Systems, currently the #1 trade journal devoted specifically to applications in GIS and related spatial technologies, as well as market trends. Molly Trudeau, editor of Geo Info Systems, has once again issued a strong invitation to UCGIS researchers to use the journal as an outlet for short articles about our work. Specifically she is looking for authors for the column "Academic Pursuits". Recent contributors to "Academic Pursuits" include Barbara Buttenfield ("Delivering Geospatial Data: The Future of the Spatial Information Infrastructure", June 1997), Karen Kemp and Richard Wright ("UCGIS Identifies GIScience Education Priorities", September 1997 and Mike Goodchild ("Uncertainty: The Achilles Heel of GIS?", November 1998). The March 1999 issue will focus on education, training, research and GIS on the Internet, and will feature an article on the recent UCGIS Virtual Seminar. Slots past March 1999 are completely open. Please contact Molly for more information:

Molly Trudeau
Editor, Geo Info Systems
859 Williamette Street
Eugene, OR 97401-6806
Tel: 541/984-5259 Fax: 541/344-3514
mtrudeau@advanstar.com or editorial-gis@geoinfosystems.com

Molly says that they've got a surprise in store for readers in January....

Listserv Lunacy to be no More...
by Will Craig and Dawn Wright

Unfortunately, a recent flurry of activity on the UCGIS-ALL listserv caused many people to unsubscribe. Formerly, UCGIS-ALL consisted of everyone on our lists (delegates and members, plus any other person who had expressed interest in UCGIS activities and whose name had been nominated to the list). UCGIS-ALL is now being carefully moderated at Ohio State to prevent further abuses. UCGIS delegates and alternates have been removed from UCGIS-ALL, but still remain, of course, on UCGIS-DELEGATES and UCGIS-MEMBERS.

Meanwhile, the Communications Committee is looking into a new listserv software that features an easier, web-based interface for subscribers and adminstrators, automatic error mail handling, multiple level security, and failsafe unsubscribing that prevents those annoying "get me off this list!" messages. Stay tuned.

The University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) is a non-profit association of universities and other research institutions. The mission of UCGIS is:

to serve as a unified and effective voice for the geographic information science community;
to foster multidisciplinary research and education in geographic information science; and
to promote the informed and responsible use of geographic information for the benefit of society.

Last updated: January 4, 1999.

Challenges is an occasional publication of the UCGIS.
For submissions, corrections, comments or questions, please contact Dawn Wright, dawn@dusk.geo.orst.edu.

Fall/Winter 1998-'99 HeadlinesVol. 1, No. 1

UCGIS Welcomes New Members by Tom Palmerlee and Carolyn Merry

Greg Elmes of WVU is the new UCGIS President by Tom Palmerlee and Greg Elmes

UCGIS Announces Board Election Results by Tom Palmerlee

Tackling Congress in 1999 by Tom Palmerlee and Harlan Onsrud

UCGIS Summer Assemblies by Tom Palmerlee, Bob McMaster, and Richard Wright

Societies Explore GIScience Education Issues by Tom Palmerlee

UCGIS Virtual Seminar a Success by Dawn Wright

Solicitations of Articles by Kimberly Burns-Braidlow and Dawn Wright