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Purdue Libraries and School of Information Studies News

GIS Day Celebration at Purdue University

December 16th, 2014

GIS Day Celebration at Purdue University
By Nicole Kong
 

The 7th GIS Day celebration hosted by Purdue University Libraries was held on November 6th and 7th. It was a wonderful event to connect the GIS community on campus and beyond. During both days of celebration, the community got to know more GIS resources both on campus and across Indiana, connected students with GIS professionals, expanded GIS into more disciplines, and brought geospatial interests to high school students.

Working with Steven Smith at Earth, Atmospheric and Planetary Science, the High School GIS Day program, attracted 60 high school students to visit Purdue and learn spatial thinking skills. Age-appropriate activities were designed to bring the excitements to students. Students had the opportunities to interact with Tom Brenneman, GeoMentor from the most famous GIS software company – ESRI, about how GIS is applied in the real world application. Many thanks to the fabulous volunteer team from the libraries and GIS students on campus for their wonderful job in helping out the event! They have guided the high school student groups around Discovery Park for a service-learning project, which leads to a Discovery Park Visitor Tour Map available here: http://maps.lib.purdue.edu/gisday2014/.

On November 7th, over a hundred people from various departments across the university attended College GIS Day program. Guest speakers from Indiana State Government, Indiana Geographic Information Council, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Polis Center at IUPUI, Indiana State University, private sectors, and different departments at Purdue delivered informative and interesting presentations and interacted with students. In particular, the Indiana Geographic Information Officer, Jim Spark, shared state-wide GIS resources that could be used for higher education. The executive director of Polis Center at IUPUI and book author of Spatial Humanities, David Bodernhamer, talked about the expansion and potential of geospatial technologies in humanities. In addition, the Career Lunch talk invited nine panel presenters to interact with students about GIS career opportunities, where students got suggestions on how to prepare for their career from the employers point of view. All the talks on GIS Day will be available from Purdue e-pub shortly.

The success of GIS Day event is made by the great team work. Thank Dean Mullins at the libraries for bringing in sponsors across the campus, which made the event possible! Purdue GIS Day is sponsored by the Office of the Provost, College of Liberal Arts, College of Agriculture, College of Science, College of Education, College of Technology, the Graduate School and Purdue University Libraries. Thank the GIS Day planning committee, Larry Theller (ABE), Larry Biehl (ITAP), Steven Smith (EAPS), Ann Bessenbacher (DLRC), Nicholas Rauh (Classics), Jarrod Doucette (FNR), Jonathan Pettit (CRCS), Sara Weist (Political Science), Shannon Walker (Libraries), Becky Bunch (Libraries), Michael Fosmire (Libraries), for their time and continuous support! Thank many many others in the GIS community for every help they have offered! For more GIS resources at Purdue, please visit the website: https://www.lib.purdue.edu/gis, or contact geohelp@purdue.edu.