The 'G' in STEM

Geography is a STEM subject.

STEM is an acronym for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics, and STEM is the focus of an enormous amount of educational effort, across the U.S. and abroad. The basic idea is that STEM education is vital to the success of individual students and the technological and economic progress of our society. STEM encompasses a broad array of subjects, although this point bears repeating. The STEM Education Coalition calls for "An inclusive definition and use of the term “STEM education” by federal and state programs that is not limited to only math and science, but also embraces engineering and technology, and broadly encompasses related STEM fields and their unique needs."

I had an opportunity recently to highlight Geography's STEM credentials at the "Get Energized! Powering the Future with Green STEM Education" event hosted by the Boston Youth Environmental Network (BYEN) at the Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology in Boston. The purpose of this event was to draw attention to teaching about sustainability, renewable energy, and clean technology concepts and careers. I was invited to set up an interactive demonstration for the exhibition session, and also to participate as a panelist in a session on Pathways into Green STEM Careers.

It isn't hard to demonstrate how Geography is both a STEM subject and a promising ('Green') career pathway, especially when it involves geospatial technology (e.g. digital maps, GPS, satellite imagery). I demonstrated the use of ArcGIS, a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) program, for the siting of wind turbines in Massachusetts. I adapted this from an exercise I've used for both my undergraduate and graduate GIS students. You can see screenshots of the process in the slideshow, although we did it interactively at the event. MassGIS has an online Wind Energy Site Screening Tool that lets you interactively explore a similar process. My goal was to highlight how a spatial approach and perspective - combining geospatial technology and an understanding of human-environment interactions (core aspects of Geography) - supports sustainable, green development. It can be lucrative too. A recent article in Science Careers entitled "The New Cartographers" highlighted the nation's need for a ready supply of graduates in GIS and related fields. This echoes analyses by the U.S. Department of Labor.

Geospatial analysis is a sub-discipline of Geography, and Geography, and the STEM aspects of Geography, are more than geospatial technology. Geography has many definitions, but a common aspect is its spatial perspective - across social and physical phenomena - and interest in "big picture" relationships, especially human-environment relationships. Geography has long been recognized as a core discipline, but that recognition hasn't always been robust. Of nine areas listed as core academic subjects in the No Child Left Behind Act, geography is the only one that has no dedicated federal funding program. In Massachusetts, Geography education has gotten short shrift. However, the Massachusetts Geographic Alliance has been spearheading an effort to establish a state-sanctioned Commission on Geography Education to study the status of geography education in Massachusetts and make recommendations to the legislature. Ideally, this effort will result in reinstatement of Geography education in K-12 education throughout the Commonwealth. National Geographic has been leading a parallel effort at the national level in its campaign for "geo-literacy."

Given the national interest in STEM education, and Geography's solid STEM identity, it seems strange to have to plead Geography's case. But the work must be done.

Learning "To Do" Geography

I recently returned from the annual Association of American Geographers conference, which took place this year in Los Angeles, California. This is a big event (over 8,000 people from around the planet), with hundreds of sessions, panels, workshops, and field trips to choose from. In addition to presenting my own, latest research, catching up with old friends, networking, and trying to make it to all of the "sponsored socials" that involved a free drink, the big challenge was choosing which sessions to attend. This year I focused on sessions that dealt with pedagogy and career preparation (for my students).

Here are some highlights that I picked up:

Field experience is crucial in the teaching of Geography - even for introductory or service courses.

Students (and teachers) need to constantly practice the art of seeing the real world landscape through a geographical perspective. Professor Herschel Stern of Miracosta College argued that "seeing landscape" means going out and learning how to describe and categorize features (understanding the concept of categories), identifying based on shared characteristics, and practicing how to describe location, orientation, neighborhood boundaries, etc. - basic skills for any Geographer. Professor William Selby of Santa Monica College argued that both cultural and physical Geographers need to practice taking field notes and recording their observations; basic skills for all researchers and another aspect of "seeing landscape."

Organized field experiences do not necessarily mean supervised, group trips in which the entire class has to be transported to some location at the same time (with all of the attendant expenses and logistical and liability headaches). Consider non-guided, independent fieldwork lessons. Professor Mark Hafen from the University of South Florida described how he manages to send students from his Wetland Environment class on a minimum of 4 field trips each semester. The key is that they go out independently or in small groups - on their own time. Before sending them out, he does in-class demonstrations of how to use equipment and record observations. In order to work well, field trips have to be very focused with specific objectives. For Hafen, data collection is qualitative to demonstrate understanding of concepts. Students graph the data they collect and then read their data to look for patterns and understand what they saw in the field and how the graph helps. Herschel and Selby asked us to consider sending students to museums, visitor centers, and self-guided nature walks, which many students have probably never seen.

"Spatial Thinking" is important across the college curriculum, but it still needs clarification.

With the publication of the National Research Council report Learning to Think Spatially, and the funding of a Spatial Intelligence Learning Center, there is growing interest in how to teach spatial thinking. There is now convincing evidence that spatial abilities are related to both success and participation in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) disciplines. More generally, there is an increasing recognition of the importance of spatial thinking as a unifier of academic disciplines, including physical science, social sciences, arts and humanities. However, it is also widely acknowledged that spatial thinking is not fostered in our educational system. Professor Mary Hegarty of the University of California Santa Barbara gave a summary report from a specialist meeting convened in Santa Barbara in December 2012 which brought together geographers, cognitive scientists, and experts in a range of other disciplines (including architecture, astronomy, chemistry, geosciences, neuroscience, history and political science) to examine how to best educate spatial thinking at the college level. Hegarty asserted (quite provocatively) that "current attempts to teach spatial thinking are faith based." There is little objective evidence that attempts to teach spatial thinking are effective. She argued that we need to understand and articulate what we mean by "spatial thinking." What are the core concepts and skills? What are the varieties of spatial thinking? She explained that the only really well developed assessments of spatial skills come from cognitive psychology, and these have focused only on "mental rotation". We still need to know more ways to define and assess spatial thinking.

Not everyone is at a loss for a definition of spatial thinking. Diana Stinton from the University of Redlands offered her definition of spatial thinking as "the ability to visualize and interpret location, position, distance, direction, pattern, relationships, movement, and change through space (and time)." She made a point, however, of distinguishing between common understandings of "spatial skills" and "geography-based skills." Spatial skills, she explained, are those more typically associated with engineering skills (e.g. "mental rotation") and 3D visualization. By contrast, geography-based skills are those associated with maps and geospatial technology, and aimed at Geography students and educators. Regardless of origin, she argued that we should promote spatial literacy across all disciplines. Spatial literacy is the "confident and competent use of maps, mapping, and spatial thinking to address ideas, situations and problems in the real world." Stinton is a leader in this realm. I had the pleasure of seeing her speak before at the GIS conference at Bucknell. She recently launched a web resource for GIS educators - teachgis.org

Geoscience jobs are/will be booming, but Geography remains poorly understood by employers AND students

Heather Houlton from the American Geosciences Institute (AGI) and colleagues from the AAG discussed current trends in the geosciences job market and the challenges of aligning learning outcomes to workforce competencies. Houlton reported on a number of promising job trends for Geographers:

• There are over 260,000 geoscience jobs in the U.S. today
• Based on demographics, we can expect 130,000 of current geoscientists to retire in the next few years, opening up those positions to new people
• By 2021, up to 72,000 completely new geoscience jobs are expected to be created
• By 2021, the U.S. will see between 15,000 and 45,000 new graduates from the geosciences, leaving a big gap between job supply and demand (better for those demanding)

The less encouraging news is that Geography is "under-recognized" or poorly understood by employers, while Geography graduates continue to have a narrow conception of their career prospects. These observations are based on recent surveys by the AGI. As most job-seekers learn, there are VERY few jobs with the title "Geographer", but there A LOT of jobs that need geographic skills and perspectives. While Geography advocates need to work on educating employers and labor agencies, it is up to educational institutions and faculty to do a better job of educating students about the vast variety of career possibilities that a Geography education provides.

GIS Across the Curriculum

This past weekend my department chair Steve Matchak and I attended the GIS & Spatial Thinking in the Undergraduate Curriculum Conference at Bucknell University, in Lewisburg, Pennsylvania. The conference brought together about 70+ people from 50 schools across the country to discuss ways of better integrating spatial applications and geospatial technology in undergraduate education. The event also served the purpose of fostering important networking opportunities.
While there were a number of schools, including Bucknell, that had well established GIS programs (in some form or another), there were equally as many who were there looking for ideas on how to get things started.  What struck me was how many of the attendees were not from Geography or GIS-centric programs.  More importantly, the most consistent message of the conference discussions was that GIS should not be  confined to Geography or GIS-specific programs.  Bucknell is an example of this philosophy in action.  Although it has had a robust Geography program for some time, and its Geographers have been strong advocates of GIS at the school, the rapid and sustained diffusion of GIS across the school has been spear-headed by Janine Glathar, a GIS Specialist, from their Library and IT department (and the organizer of the conference). She is academically non-aligned, and she says that this 'neutral' position has been important to her success in helping more departments integrate this technology into their research and curricula (note that this is the same model adopted by Harvard's Center for Geographic Analysis). In fact, quite a number of the attendees and presenters were from Library IT departments looking to develop the ideas and the capacity to bring in this technology to support faculty and students across their schools.
This expansive, trans-disciplinary perspective of GIS was really reinforced by the keynote speakers and a number of the presenters and attendees who emphasized qualitative applications of GIS, primarily in the humanities.
I think a lot of us were particularly struck by the keynote presentation "Geographic Imagination in the Digital Humanities" by Anne Knowles from Middlebury College. She talked about historical applications of GIS, and specifically, examples of work by her and her students to understand and represent the World War II Holocaust.  Her graphical representations were clever and beautiful and moving.  One might say "cartography at its best," except that a number of these representations were not 'cartographic' in the conventional sense, and they certainly did not use GIS.  The one that sticks with me is an image of a long, snaking line of black silhouettes,  clearly prisoners, on a forced march, against a blank, white background, the line of silhouettes diminishing as it winds its way into the distant horizon. This was probably the most subversive message of the conference: abandon the assumption that GIS -and even maps -  are the best or only ways to represent spatial phenomena. Heck, rethink your ideas of what constitutes "space".
The conference was engaging and well worth our time.  We had a lot of really great conversations and the whole experience really gave Steve and I a lot to think about regarding our own program.  We had expected to hear cheerleading for GIS and were prepared to take back strategies to bolster our existing GIS degree program.  We came away with questions about the wisdom of our technique-specific approach.  Maybe we need to think more about specific, topical foci to ground the GIS training.  Maybe we need to look at ways of engaging more of our colleagues in this technology - utilizing our own Digital Geography Laboratory as a GIS hub for the whole institution.
We're waiting for Bucknell to post presentations and materials from the conference.  As soon as they do, I'll post a link to those here as well.  In the meantime, here are some of the more interesting resources discussed at the conference:

• PLOTS Balloon Mapping Kit - A low-cost kit that you can purchase online to do a class-based aerial photography exercise using a balloon and a camera (remote sensing on the cheap!)
• NEATLINE is a geotemporal exhibit-builder that allows you to create beautiful, complex maps and narrative sequences from collections of archives and artifacts, and to connect your maps and narratives with timeline. 
• Worldmapper is a collection of world maps, where territories are re-sized on each map according to the subject of interest - otherwise known as cartograms.
• Floating Sheep - a site dedicated to mapping and analyzing user generated geocoded data. The results provide one glimpse of what internet users (in the aggregate) think about particular places. See the now (in)famous map of racist tweets following President Obama's reelection.  
• SPACIT - Education for spatial citizenship in Europe. 
• TeachGIS - because no one should have to face GIS alone.  A resource (coming soon) for GIS instructors. 
• i-Tree - Tools for assessing and managing community forests.
• The Stanford Spatial History Project - a place for a collaborative community of scholars to engage in creative visual analysis to further research in the field of history.

Spreading the 'G' Word

Last night I had the pleasure of making a presentation on "Applications of Geo-Information Science to Social and Environmental Science Careers" to students and faculty at Endicott College.

The focus of my presentation was on how geospatial technologies - and specifically Geographic Information Systems (GIS) - could be applied in a variety of disciplines. I was asked by Dave Parry, Professor of Criminal Justice, to give particular attention to law enforcement applications, which I did. Of course, as a Geographer, I was delighted to have the opportunity to wander through a variety of disciplines. In fact, I talked about applications of GIS to

• business and marketing
• natural resource management
• environmental health
• communications infrastructure
• extra-terrestrial mapping
• law enforcement
• emergency management planning

The presentation was exceptionally well attended (at least in my experience!). I think there were more than 75 students present - at a 7pm event! I was given a very warm welcome and fielded a lot of good questions from both students and faculty. I am hoping that we can find the opportunity to work more closely with Endicott.
I want to thank Professors Alice Locicero and David Parry, as well as Dean Peter Eden for the opportunity.

To help search for [NAME/ENTITY] click here ...

In 1997, the folks at SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) announced the launch of the SETI@home project - an effort to engage the public, literally, in the search for technically advanced alien life. By simply downloading an attractive screen saver, individuals could donate the spare computational power of their idle computers, creating a distributed, virtual supercomputer, reducing the money and time spent by scientists, and increasing the chances of detecting an extraterrestrial radio transmission. To date, some 6 million individuals from almost every country on the planet have participated, creating in effect the largest coordinated computational effort in human history. SETI@home has spawned successful imitations on the search for cures for cancer (folding@home), modeling of climate change (climateprediction.net), and others (see "Searching for E.T. and the Cure for Cancer" Planetary Society May/June 2007).

In 2007, a similar effort is unfolding. On Monday, September 3, 2007, wealthy adventurer Steve Fossett was reported missing after failing to return to an airstrip at a southern Nevada ranch while piloting a light aircraft. He was looking for a dry lake bed where he could attempt to break the world land speed record. You might know Mr. Fossett from his other high profile stunts: first person to fly solo nonstop around the world in either a plane or a balloon, swimming across the English Channel, running marathons and climbing the highest peaks on six continents. As Nevada authorities and search and rescue teams mobilized, Fossett's billionaire friend, Richard Branson, asked another friend at Google if it was possible to use the imagery of Google Earth to search for the missing aviator. Many people were surprised to learn (interesting in itself) that Google Earth's planetary imagery is not 'real-time' and that many images may be 3 or more years out of date. Moreover, Google does not collect the imagery itself, but rather purchases it from a variety of other sources. However, at Branson's request, Google turned around and shelled out at least $100,000 to purchase up-to-the-minute imagery of the Nevada desert from two companies (GeoEye and DigitalGlobe) that maintain commercial satellites that acquire high resolution imagery of Earth on a daily basis. But it didn't stop there. Google passed the imagery to Amazon.com, whose online tool Mechanical Turk allows thousands of people to share the job of combing through the aerial and satellite imagery in search of Steve Fossett. When you arrive at Amazon.com's dedicated Steve Fossett search site, you are greeted with the message "To help search for Steve Fossett click here," and presented with sample images and instructions on how to engage in the search. According to Steve Cohen, coordinator of Amazon's search site, "thousands of people" have signed up to participate ("Internet Users Join Search for Steve Fossett" NPR 09/12/07; "With Web's Help, the World Joins Search for Fossett" Washington Post 09/14/07).

The editors at Directions Magazine, a geospatial industry news source, examined the Steve Fossett search as a "teachable moment" in a recent podcast - focusing on the education of the wider public on the variety of technologies employed in this endeavor (from aerial and satellite pictures to hyperspectral imagery). As they describe it, this effort represents a convergence of technologies - Internet and geospatial. This is indeed significant - there is no bigger or more important trend in geospatial technology than its co-evolution with the Internet. However, I would argue that there is more to these phenomena than simply technological evolution. We are increasingly seeing the potential of combining massively distributed resources (i.e., Internet and computers and open source software) with a widespread willingness of both expert and non-experts to volunteer their time and energy and resources for the greater good (however that might be defined). Before Steve Fossett, there was Hurricane Katrina. In the chaotic aftermath of the August 2005 hurricane events that devastated the Gulf Coast (don't forget Hurricanes Rita and Wilma), a general call went out for GIS experts to bring their laptops to the disaster zone to aid in search and rescue and recovery. So many answered the call that most had to be thanked and turned away. As it became evident that federal and state government efforts would fall short in aiding individuals, faculty and students at Louisiana State University's Geography department took the initiative. At the same time, non-experts stepped up and used existing free tools, such as Google Maps, to create online resources to help post timely information about specific locations affected by the storm - news by people in the area for people in the area (see http://www.scipionus.com/).

In December, Michael Goodchild - the GIS deity who resides at UC Santa Barbara - will convene a specialist meeting of hand picked experts to discuss what Goodchild calls "volunteered sources" - "a flood of new web services and other digital sources ... that can potentially provide rich, abundant, and timely flows of geographic and geo-referenced information." Goodchild suggests a number of important questions, including the motivation of individuals to provide georeferenced data publicly and the potential of combining advanced Internet technology with human brain power. It is likely that the experts will be most fascinated with the technological implications, but I think it is equally important to recognize the social significance of so many people's readiness to volunteer their time and resources, as well as the power of combining technology with collective will.

As of this posting, the search for Steve Fossett has led to the discovery of 8 previously undiscovered planes that have crashed in the area over the years, but not the principal target himself. We can only hope that the search for extraterrestrial life will have such collateral success.