I have taught, on an irregular schedule, graduate topics courses in the Department of Biology, the Department of Geography, and the Department of Geology (Spring Semester 1997).
Geography 105 and 106 are offered every other year or more often. Surveying Engineering 140 is offered every year and is now taught by Dr. Riadh Munjy, Professor of Surveying Engineering. Plant Science 115 will be offered every fall semester.
Dr. K. P. Leung, Associate Professor of Geography, teaches four courses in computer technology and GIS in the Department of Geography. These courses are:
The several GIS courses in the Department of Geography are by far the most interdisciplinary at CSU Fresno. I typically have students from geography, geology, biology, agriculture, engineering, computer sciences, and even photo journalism in my Geography 105 and 106 classes. Nevertheless, there is no cross-campus coordination of GIS education at CSU Fresno. GIS courses compete with each other for the pool of students (the case for all courses at CSU campuses since FTEs are the currency of CSU regarding department budgets and allocation of campus resources).
The future is bright. All GIS courses are will attended. All successful students have gone on to GIS positions in government and in industry. Often, graduate students in GIS do not complete their degree requirements due their taking a position in the GIS workplace for which they qualify based on successful course completion. GIS in agriculture is a definite growth area since GPS, GIS, and remote sensing are used in precision farming techniques. Also, many companies will soon be offering worldwide remote sensing and GIS data in real time to agribusiness (images and GIS data acquired yesterday and delivered today on a weekly repeat cycle).
The GeoInformation Technology (GIT) facility is funded solely by research grants and contracts. Over the past 7 years, GIT has been able to build a significant instruction facility which is used jointly for research and instruction. We will soon have 12 Pentium-based computers in a digital network. Supplementing the computer system is a networked system of analog computer monitors and color television monitors which are fed from the instructor's station. There are 7 sources of video and audio in addition to the computer-monitor feed from the instructor's computer. Each computer also has a fast connection to the Internet via the CSU Fresno Campus Data Network.
Recently, MicroImages, Inc., the developer of the professional image processing and GIS data processing software package, TNTmipss, has released a free version of their software known as TNTlite. I have written several publications which serve as tutorials for TNTlite. TNTlite has the full functionality of TNTmips and runs on any computer platform having reassonable speed and capacity (e.g., Pentium-based computers, PowerMacs, and a variety of workstations). The development of TNTlite should aid GIS education greatly. Students who have adequate resources at home or in their workplace can use TNTlite to learn how to handle raster, vector, CAD, TIN, and database files in an integrated GIS environment. TNTlite gives full access to external files. The difference between TNTlite and TNTmips is that GIS object sizes are limited under TNTlite, and TNTlite does not allow export or professional layout of GIS data. There is a Print Snapshot option in TNTlite to a Windows-driver supported color printer.