NEARC Fall 2015

Kate Doiron*

The intersection of education and its role in preparing students for a career is a frequently discussed topic, particularly with respect to Masters-level degrees. Building practical skills, beyond technical aspects of GIS analysis, is key to ensuring that students are prepared for more than academic work when they graduate into a field that has many other job opportunities. As a full time consultant, I developed a graduate-level Spatial Database Development course for Clark University, and taught the course for three years. The primary focus of the course is to create geodatabases in ArcGIS, and the students each undertake a final project to collect and edit GIS data, create a geodatabase schematic, generate metadata, and upload the data into their geodatabase structure. However, throughout the course the students also have to meet with advisors (“clients”), write weekly memos, complete a literature search, keep track of processes, present their findings, and write up a final report to accompany their database. In the field, all of these pieces go along with being a GIS analyst, and this course provides students with not only an idea of what consulting/governmental/NGO work will entail, but gives them a solid example of work to present in interviews.