During much of the 1990's NCGIA worked actively to support and promote GIS education in the community colleges. While the current role has been reduced to the provision of resources on our web site, we hope that what we have available will be of help to you.
In 1996 we received a grant from the NSF Advanced Technological
Education Program to develop a Core
Curriculum for Technical Programs (CCTP). This is actually
a curriculum building resource, rather than a complete set of
curriculum materials. The CCTP includes nearly 50 units of information
related to GIS education in a community and technical college
setting. It also has links to existing community college GIS
course and programs in its Resource section. NCGIA
Core Curriculum in Geographic Information Science for universities
which you may also find useful.
NCGIA has participated in a new NSF Advanced Technological Education grant. The project, GIS Access, is organizing GIS and Active Learning Institutes around the United States for summer 1999 (with follow-up Institutes in 2000). This is a good opportunity for community college educators to both explore GIS and alternate teaching strategies.
A continuation of this general conference series took place in fall 1998 in Ypslanti, Michigan at the GISED conference. A similar event is currently being planned for fall 1999 in association with a new conference that replaces the old GIS/LIS conference series. Contact the GISED conference organizers for more details.
An excellent resource for college instructors interested in starting GIS programs is Ann Johnson at ESRI. She has a good sense of what is going on in Community College GIS education around the nation.
