GIS and Spatial Thinking - a New Paradigm in Education?
February 1st, 2007

The SPACE Education Development Coordinator, Fiona Goodchild, and SPACE Co-PI, Michael Goodchild, have been front-and-center on advocating new approaches to embracing spatial literacy in education at all levels.

Fiona Goodchild's "An Outsiders View of GIS Education" was presented as a keynote address to the GIScience 2006 Conference in Münster, Germany in September 2006. She focused on some of the Educational issues confronting the use of GIS to impart skills in spatial thinking. Her PowerPoint presentation summarizes some of the main questions that she raises: Can GIS be integrated into a much wider range of academic disciplines? What are the cognitive demands of GIS as a tool for analysis? Can these skills be transferred into the social sciences and humanities? What would be the essential elements of an interdisciplinary course in GIS and spatial thinking?

Mike Goodchild's "The Fourth R? Rethinking GIS Education" appeared as a cover story in the Fall 2006 issue of ArcNews. He argues that spatial literacy needs to be added to the three Rs - reading, writing, arithmetic as a basic foundation for human engagement with life's higher objectives.

Recipients of 2006 SPACE Instructional Development Awards Announced
20 February 2007

The following awards were made recently to participants in prior SPACE workshops. Detailed information on the accomplishments and plans of these and other award recipients is available at:
http://www.csiss.org/SPACE/materials/participants

Adriana Abdenur, International Affairs, The New School
Accomplishment: Modified a course on Urbanization and Inequality in South Africa, initiated discussion on developing a more explicit spatial focus in studies of international development, published an article in the New School International Affairs Bulletin on the need for spatial perspective in teaching and research, and established a partnership with the New School's Parsons Institute for Information Mapping to create pedagogical materials on inequality in cities of the developing world.
Award Info: Awarded $1,250 to acquire data for student exercises and to engage students in the development, design, and publication of didactic materials for use in courses on urbanization and segregation of South African and Brazilian cities.

Paula Ebron and Claudia Engel, Cultural and Social Anthropology, Stanford University
Accomplishment: Introduced GIS-based exercises and spatial perspectives in introductory courses on the anthropology of globalization.
Award Info: Awarded $750 to acquire geo-referenced demographic and economic data on non-US global cities and to employ undergraduate research assistants to create a repository of shapefiles for developing teaching resources.

Joe D. Francis, Sociology, Cornell University
Accomplishment: Developed and taught course on Analytic Mapping and Spatial Modeling.
Award Info: Awarded $750 to help defray cost of participating in the 2007 summer workshops on Spatial Regression at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. This will provide a foundation for developing a new course on spatial statistics.

Iris Hui, Political Science, University of California, Berkeley
Accomplishment: Developed a 2006-2007 seminar series at UCB on Social Science in Place: GIS, Spatial Concepts and Applied Social Science.
Award Info: Awarded $1,200 to organize a Panel discussion at the 2007 annual meeting of the American Political Science Association on GIS, Spatial Statistics, and Political Science and to participate as a panelist to explore GIS applications in political science at the 2007 annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers.

Nancy Obermeyer, Geography, Indiana State University, Terre Haute
Accomplishment: Undertook several initiatives to expand GIS teaching applications across a range of disciplines at Indiana State.
Award Info: Awarded $750 for organizing campus workshops for creating teaching modules and for helping researchers in the use of GIS.

Iheanyi N. Osondu, History, Geography, and Political Science Fort Valley State University
Accomplishment: Developed a new undergraduate certificate course in GIS.
Award Info: Awarded $500 to organize a campus enlightenment event on the uses of GIS in undergraduate teaching and on the value of GIS in serving the local region of Fort Valley State University.

Claudia Scholz, Sociology, Trinity University (San Antonio)
Accomplishment: Work with colleagues and students on applications of GIS, mapping, and spatial thinking in teaching and research; and organizing a panel of prior participants in SPACE workshops to explore Integrating Spatial Thinking into the Sociology Curriculum at the 2007 annual meeting of the American Sociological Association.
Award Info: Awarded $810 to participate in an ESRI training session on GIS that will assist her development of content for sociology courses at Trinity University.

Wei Tu, Geology and Geography, Georgia Southern University
Accomplishment: Developed Internet GIS resources for teaching and enhancing existing courses in GIS and cartography.
Award Info: Awarded $810 to attend in an advanced ArcIMS training session offered by ESRI to assist in expanding the use of Internet GIS in teaching.

Joan Walker, Geography and Environment, Boston University
Accomplishment: Enhanced courses in GIS and in Economic Geography with greater hands-on GIS applications.
Award Info: Awarded $750 to initiate discussions on establishing a region-wide alliance of GIS instructors in the Boston area for sharing web resources on GIS case studies.

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Goodchild awarded the Prix Vautrin Lud
July 16, 2007

Professor Mike Goodchild has been awarded the Prix Vautrin Lud, regarded by many as Geography's equivalent of the Nobel Prize. The international award is named after a 16th Century French map maker who is credited as being the first to name the New World "America" on a map (exactly 500 years ago in 1507, in honor of the Italian navigator Amerigo Vespucci; detail at right is from the original which is in the Library of Congress). The award will be presented at this year's Festival Internationale de Géographie (FIG), held in the French town of Saint-Dié-des-Vosges where Vautrin Lud was born. The prestigious annual award is given to a scientist or scientists who has/have significantly advanced the field of geography, and Mike becomes the 19th scholar to have won it. Previous recipients include Peter Haggett (UK), 1991; Torsten Hägerstrand (Sweden) and Gilbert F. White (USA), 1992; Peter Gould (USA), 1993; Milton Santos (Brazil), 1994; David Harvey (UK), 1995; Brownish Roger and Paul Claval (both from France), 1996; Jean-Bernard Racine (Switzerland), 1997; Doreen Massey (UK), 1998; Ron Johnston (UK), 1999; Yves Lacoste (France), 2000; Peter Hall (UK), 2001; Bruno Messerli (Switzerland), 2002; Allen Scott (USA), 2003; Philippe Pinchemel (France), 2004; Brian J. L. Berry (USA), 2005; and Heinz Wanner (Switzerland), 2006.

Professor Goodchild received a BA in Physics from Cambridge University and a PhD in Geography from McMaster University. He joined the UCSB Department of Geography in 1988, and he has served as Chair of the Department (1998-2000); chair of the Executive Committee of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis since 1997; Associate Director of the Alexandria Digital Library Project since 1994; Chair of the Mapping Science Committee, National Research Council, 1997-1999; and Director of NCGIA's Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science since 1999. His research interests include urban and economic geography, geographic information systems, and spatial analysis. Considered the father of GIScience, Goodchild's many honors include being elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2002, being awarded the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 2003.and being elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006.

Mike was selected as the recipient of the Prix Vautrin Lud by an international committee last May, and he will receive the award at FIG on October 4th.

SPACE Instructional Development Award for Workshop Attendees
January 20, 2008 Deadline for Application

SPACE invites faculty at four-year colleges and universities to apply for instructional development awards to fund program activities for spatial thinking in undergraduate social science education. These activities include:

• Presenting a conference paper about teaching spatial thinking at the undergraduate level in the social sciences.
• Participating in a workshop or training program on uses of spatial analysis/GIS software (e.g., a GIS vendor workshop, GeoDa workshop with Luc Anselin).
• Participating in a professional workshop dedicated to instruction and student learning of spatial analysis concepts and technology.
• Organize a campus event to highlight the value of spatial thinking/analysis across the university curriculum.

To apply, you must have attended a SPACE workshop in 2004, 2005, 2006, and 2007

Submit application by January 20, 2008

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Goodchild Receives GITA Lifetime Achievement Award
March 5, 2007

On March 5, 2007, the Geospatial Information and Technology Association (GITA) announced that Professor Michael Goodchild has been named as the 2007 recipient of GITA’s Lifetime Achievement Award. “This distinguished award recognizes an individual’s outstanding contribution and longstanding commitment to the geospatial industry. A specially appointed blue-ribbon panel of experts -- representing geospatial users, solution providers, academia, publishing, government, and business -- carefully evaluates nominees for this prestigious award using a stringent set of criteria. Candidates for this award include those whose pioneering spirit and demonstrated dedication have contributed greatly to the geospatial industry and whose example serves as an inspiration to others. The Geospatial Industry Lifetime Achievement Award is presented at the GITA Annual Conference. Nominations are open to any current or former member of the geospatial community”
(http://gita.org/about-gita/awards_program/index.asp#life).

To quote GITA’s press release, “Goodchild first encountered geographic information systems and computer mapping in the late 1960s, when it was a struggling high-end computing application, and said he’s particularly gratified by the response the technology has received in universities. Goodchild said he’s happy that the general public has reached the point where virtually anyone with a Web browser can make use of geospatial tools; but, at the same time he said that geospatial professionals have only begun to recognize how far they still have to go in giving everyone access to the basic spatial literacy that’s needed to use the tools effectively.” “I’m immensely honored by this award, especially as it comes from an organization that emphasizes the importance of education in the broad and expanding geospatial community. This is a very exciting time to be working in this area, particularly for the younger generation,” Goodchild said
(http://www.gisuser.com/content/view/10965/).

Professor Goodchild received a BA in Physics from Cambridge University and a PhD in Geography from McMaster University. He joined the UCSB Department of Geography in 1988, and he has served as Chair of the Department (1998-2000); chair of the Executive Committee of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis since 1997; Associate Director of the Alexandria Digital Library Project since 1994; Chair of the Mapping Science Committee, National Research Council, 1997–1999; and Director of NCGIA’s Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science since 1999. His research interests include urban and economic geography, geographic information systems, and spatial analysis. Considered the father of GIScience, Goodchild’s many honors include being elected as a member of the National Academy of Sciences and Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2002, being awarded the Founder's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society in 2003, and being elected as a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2006. For more, see Mike’s web site at www.geog.ucsb.edu/~good.

SPACE Workshops in Summer 2007
18-23 June 2007 OSU, 15-20 July 2007 UCSB

SPACE will offer two 6-day workshops in summer 2007
(Click on the titles of the workshops for more information).
The dates are:

18-23 June 2007, The Ohio State University
15-20 July 2007, University of California, Santa Barbara

Applications may be submitted online at
http://www.csiss.org/SPACE/workshops/2007/apply.

Spatial Thinking in the Social Sciences and Humanities
National Center for Supercomputing Applications
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
1205 W. Clark St.
Urbana, Illinois

December 18-19, 2006

This workshop brings together leading figures from various disciplines in the social sciences and humanities who use spatial analysis and GIS in their work. The objective is to reflect on how spatial thinking affects substantive findings and changes the way research questions are approached, and to assess the role of computation. The goal is to end up with useful insights and recommendations on the requirements for cyberenvironments and cyberinfrastructure for the social sciences and humanities.

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SPACE Instructional Development Award
October 4, 2006

Recipients Announced
The following awards were made recently to participants in prior SPACE workshops.

Claude W. Barnes, Political Science and Criminal Justice, North Carolina A&T State University

Accomplishment: Developed and taught a new undergraduate course on GIS for Social Sciences.

Award Info: $1250 was awarded to present a paper on GIS instruction within an HBCU context (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) to the Thirteenth National HBCU Faculty Development Symposium in Houston, Texas (October 2006)

Benjamin Forest, Geography, Dartmouth College (currently at McGill University)

Accomplishment: Adapted existing course materials in political geography to reflect a more explicit treatment of spatial pattern by advanced students using GIS.

Award Info: $1250 was awarded to gather data and support information to engage students in a case study in political geography about political representation and sovereignty in Quebec and to present a paper on this to the Canadian Association of Geographers.

Laurie Garo, Geography & Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina-Charlotte

Accomplishment: Developed a new undergraduate course on GIS in Criminology for Social Sciences, offered at Johnson C. Smith University.

Award Info: $1250 was awarded to present a paper on GIS instruction within an HBCU context (Historically Black Colleges and Universities) to the Thirteenth National HBCU Faculty Development Symposium in Houston, Texas (October 2006).

Christopher L. Holoman, Political Science, Hilbert College

Accomplishment: Adapted existing course assignments to reflect opportunities for spatial thinking and created a course syllabus for introducing GIS in political science.

Award Info: $1000 was awarded to organize a workshop on spatial thinking for colleagues at Hilbert College and continue training in spatial analysis.

Wenquan (Charles) Zhang, Sociology, Brown University (currently at Texas A&M)

Accomplishment: Developed syllabus and taught a GIS course designed for compatibility with the needs of students in sociology.

Award Info: $1250 was awarded to participate Arc-IMS training and to prepare training sessions in map making, exploratory spatial data analysis (ESDA), and spatial data structures for sociology students.

For information on applying for awards, past workshop participants should see http://www.csiss.org/SPACE/workshops/2006/award/
The application deadline is 20 November 2006.

Geospatial Analysis
October 6, 2006

"New comprehensive guide to geospatial analysis available"

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National HBCU Faculty Development Symposium features Pre-symposium Workshop on GIS and Spatial Analysis in Social Science Teaching
Houston, Texas
October 19th, 2006

Former participants in SPACE workshops at the University of California, Santa Barbara will offer a workshop for faculty from Historically Black Colleges and Universities. David Padgett (Tennessee State University), Laurie Garo (University of North Carolina at Charlotte), and Charles Barnes (North Carolina A&T State University) will take part in a half-day workshop in Houston, Texas on 19 October 2006 that features their presentations on GIS and Spatial Analysis Methods in Teaching and Research and GIS and Spatial Thinking for Social Sciences at HBCUs.

For more information

http://www.csiss.org/SPACE/workshops/sessions.php#anc1
http://www.csiss.org/SPACE/materials/participants/2005/barnes-garo.php

Goodchild Elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
April 26, 2006

Professor Michael Goodchild is among the 2006 class of Fellows elected to the prestigious American Academy of Arts & Sciences. The election, the result of a highly competitive selection process, recognizes Goodchild's "exceptional achievement" in the social sciences.

As its Charter of 1780 expresses it, the Academy's purpose is "to cultivate every art and science which may tend to advance the interest, honor, dignity, and happiness of a free, independent, and virtuous people." Academy members from previous generations have included John Adams, George Washington, and Benjamin Franklin in the 18th Century; Daniel Webster, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Alexander Graham Bell in the 19th C.; and Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawking, Neils Bohr, and Albert Schweitzer in the 20th.

The Academy is an international learned society composed of the world's leading scientists, scholars, artists, business people, and public leaders. Its current membership of 4,000 American Fellows and 600 Foreign Honorary Members includes more than 160 Nobel Prize laureates and 50 Pulitzer Prize winners. Professor Goodchild and Dr. David Awschalom, Physics, bring the number of UCSB faculty members elected to the AAAS to 23; they will be among 175 new Fellows and 20 new Foreign Honorary Members who will be formally inducted into the Academy at its headquarters in Cambridge, Massachusetts on October 7th.

ESRI Press releases textbook by SPACE Instructor Richard LeGates
March 8, 2006

Think Globally, Act Regionally: GIS and Data Visualization for Social Science and Public Policy Research, an introductory textbook by Richard LeGates, was released recently by ESRI Press. The text is designed to introduce beginning students in social science courses to GIS applications. It contains exercises and a CD-ROM with ArcGIS datasets. The exercises were used by Professor LeGates in the summer 2005 SPACE workshop that he directed at San Francisco State University.

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CSISS Director Michael Goodchild, Receives Aangeenbrug Award
March 8, 2006

The Award Committee of the GIS Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers announced the selection of Michael F. Goodchild as recipient of the Robert T. Aangeenbrug GISSG Distinguished Career Award for 2006. Goodchild is co-PI on the NSF-funded SPACE program, Director of the Center for Spatially Integrated Social Science, and Professor of Geography at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

The Aangeenbrug Award is given to honor a senior scholar for sustained and effective research contributions in geographic information systems and science. It is bestowed based on a record of published research and/or other accomplishments that extend over a period of several decades. To be selected as a recipient of this award, the research of the scholar must be deemed of great importance and relevance to geographers, and this research must be largely concerned with or applicable to Geographic Information Systems and Science.

Goodchild received his BA degree from Cambridge University in Physics in 1965 and his PhD in Geography from McMaster University in 1969. He moved to Santa Barbara in 1988 and was Director of NCGIA from 1991 to 1997. He was elected member of the National Academy of Sciences and Foreign Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada in 2002. He has received honorary doctorates from Laval University, Keele University, McMaster University, and Ryerson University.

According to the Award Committee, Goodchild has made “sustained and effective contributions� to research and education in GIScience. His career achievements are mainly in his contributions to: (a) the transition from GIS as a tool to GIS as a science; (b) GIScience research; (c) GIScience research infrastructure; and (d) the dissemination of spatial thinking to researchers in a wide variety of disciplines (from environmental sciences to social sciences and humanities).

SPACE Instructional Development Award for Workshop Attendees
February 20, 2006 Deadline for Application

SPACE invites faculty at four-year colleges and universities to apply for instructional development awards to fund program activities for spatial thinking in undergraduate social science education. These activities include:

• Presenting a conference paper about teaching spatial thinking at the undergraduate level in the social sciences.
• Participating in a workshop or training program on uses of spatial analysis/GIS software (e.g., a GIS vendor workshop, GeoDa workshop with Luc Anselin).
• Participating in a professional workshop dedicated to instruction and student learning of spatial analysis concepts and technology.

To apply, you must have attended a SPACE workshop in 2004 or 2005.

Submit application by 20 February 2006

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Now Accepting Workshop Applications
January 17, 2006

SPACE is now accepting applications for the 2006 Instructor Workshops. SPACE workshops are intended for instructors of undergraduate students in the social sciences. They offer content knowledge in methods of geospatial methods, instructional resources, and professional development support for curriculum planning and learning assessment. Fill out and submit application.

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Workshop Coordinator Mei-Po Kwan Awarded for Research
UCGIS 2005 Summer Assembly
June 2005

Dr. Mei-Po Kwan of the Department of Geography, Ohio State University has been selected as the 2005 UCGIS Researcher of the Year. The UCGIS Research Award is given to the creator(s) of a particularly outstanding research contribution to Geographic Information Science (GIScience). Dr. Kwan has a strong and varied research program and one of the researchers who is asking fundamental questions about the methods of geography and, as such, is shaping the field of GIScience. Dr. Kwan’s work focuses on the geographical and temporal characteristics of people’s daily activities, and the impact of recent social, economic and political changes on their everyday lives as manifested through changes in the geographies of their daily activities.

Open Application for SPACE Instructor Workshops 2005
Application deadline: April 15, 2005

SPACE is now accepting applications for the 2005 Instructor Workshops. SPACE workshops are intended for instructors of undergraduate students in the social sciences. They offer content knowledge in methods of spatial analysis, instructional resources, and professional development support for curriculum planning and learning assessment.

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Recent Awards to OSU SPACE Workshop Coordinator Mei-Po Kwan
Annual Meeting of the AAG
April 2005

Mei-Po Kwan has been awarded the rank of Distinguished Professor of Social and Behavioral Sciences at The Ohio State University, effective October 2005. In April 2005, she received the Edward L Ullman Award from the Transport Geography Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers for outstanding contributions to the field of transportation geography. Mei-Po is the coordinator of the SPACE workshop at The Ohio State University. Congratulations Mei-Po!

Instructional Development Award Recipients Announced
March 31, 2005

SPACE has awarded 12 instructional development awards to past workshop participants who have demonstarted a dedication to incorporating spatial perspectives into their course curriculums.

The awards will be used to fund program activities for spatial thinking in undergraduate social science education. These activities include:

• Presenting a conference paper about teaching spatial thinking at the undergraduate level in the social sciences.
• Participating in a workshop or training program on uses of spatial analysis/GIS software (e.g., a GIS vendor workshop, ICPSR workshop with Luc Anselin).
• Participating in a professional workshop dedicated to instruction and student learning of spatial analysis concepts and technology.

A summary of awards is available with full details on each individual's accomplishments soon to follow.

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New GeoDa™ Workbook Available
March 7, 2005

"Exploring Spatial Data with GeoDa: A Workbook", the first complete version of the GeoDa&trade workbook is now available for free download (5.1MB). It contains 244 pages with 25 chapters of step by step guidelines and exercises to learn all the features of GeoDa, including spatial regression analysis.

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GeoDa in the Classroom
October 19, 2004

GeoDa in the Classroom is a new resource provided by the Spatial Analysis Laboratory (SAL) at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. It provides an opportunity to see what other instructors are doing with GeoDa and to share your own GeoDa-based classroom exercises.

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SPACE Instructional Development Award for Workshop Attendees
October 19, 2004

SPACE invites faculty at four-year colleges and universities to apply for instructional development awards to fund program activities for spatial thinking in undergraduate social science education. These activities include:

• Presenting a conference paper about teaching spatial thinking at the undergraduate level in the social sciences.
• Participating in a workshop or training program on uses of spatial analysis/GIS software (e.g., a GIS vendor workshop, ICPSR workshop with Luc Anselin).
• Participating in a professional workshop dedicated to instruction and student learning of spatial analysis concepts and technology.

To apply, you must have attended a SPACE workshop in 2004.

Submit application by 15 February 2005

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SPACE Program Announcement
October 9, 2003

SPACE (Spatial Perspectives for Analysis in Curriculum Enhancement) is a newly funded program of professional development, oriented to undergraduate-level instruction in the social sciences. SPACE is eligible for three years of support totaling $1.4 million under the NSF CCLI National Dissemination program of the Division of Undergraduate Education. The objectives of SPACE are to introduce spatial methodologies (GIS, spatial statistics, and analytic cartography) as foundation skills for undergraduates in such disciplines as anthropology, archaeology, history, economics, political science, and sociology, and to interdisciplinary programs in criminology, demography, and urban studies. The program will feature one- and two-week-long workshops to permit instructors of undergraduate courses to gain a fundamental understanding of spatial methods and related software, to engage in the development of curriculum, lecture, and laboratory exercises, and resources for the assessment of student learning. Workshop participants will be instructors in social science disciplines from universities and colleges from across the United States. Unlike the CSISS program which aims to advance research infrastructure for spatial social science, SPACE is targeted at dissemination of tools and concepts for spatial thinking within undergraduate programs.

Don Janelle is the program director and PI for SPACE, working with co-PIs Michael Goodchild and Richard Appelbaum. Fiona Goodchild, recipient of a 2002 Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, is the Professional Development Coordinator. The SPACE program is sponsored through CSISS in cooperation with the Institute for Social, Behavioral, and Economic Research, the Department of Geography, and the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

CSISS partners in the SPACE program include the Department of Geography at Ohio State University (Mei-Po Kwan, PI) and the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (Arthur Getis, PI). SPACE workshops will be offered during the summer months, beginning in 2004, at UCSB and OSU, and at selected UCGIS institutions. In addition, SPACE will offer short orientation workshops at annual meetings of social science academic societies and through UCGIS programs.

A full description of the program and details on how to apply to participate are available at www.csiss.org/SPACE. This website will include resources to help instructors who are interested in introducing courses or course modules on spatial analysis. It will include course syllabi, exercises and related data, examples of spatial thinking, instruments for student learning assessment, and interactive forums to enable instructors to establish support networks and to discuss issues regarding pedagogy.

Now Accepting Workshop Applications
February 10, 2003

SPACE is now accepting applications for the 2004 Instructor Workshops. SPACE workshops are intended for instructors of undergraduate students in the social sciences. They offer content knowledge in methods of spatial analysis, instructional resources, and professional development support for curriculum planning and learning assessment.

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