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Introducing the first edition of Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge.

Article Excerpt
Introduction

Constant changes in courses and curricula seem to be a fact of life ... (Turner 2001, p. 4)

So began Joe Turner's invited editorial in the June, 2001, edition of the Association for Computing Machinery's SIGCSE Bulletin (SIGSCE is ACM's Special Interest Group in Computer Science Education). ACM first endorsed a curriculum for baccalaureate degree programs in computer science in 1969, followed by a revision in 1978. In 1991, in cooperation with the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), ACM published baccalaureate curricula for both computer science and computer engineering. By 2001, the joint effort yielded new and revised curricula for four related disciplines, including computer science, computer engineering, information systems, and software engineering. An information technology curriculum followed in 2006. Although Turner was reflecting on his years of involvement in the development of computer science curricula and accreditation programs, his observation pertains to GIS education as well.

Though few were developed as methodically as the ACM/IEEE curricula there have been many local-scale and several national-scale curriculum development efforts in the U.S. related to cartography, geographic information systems, and remote sensing (e.g., Dahlberg and Jensen 1986; Nyerges and Chrisman 1989; Goodchild and Kemp 1992). Some 30 years after ACM published its first computing curriculum, the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) began work on its influential Core Curriculum in GIS (Goodchild and Kemp 1992). Work on a successor to the Core Curriculum, dubbed Model Curricula in Geographic Information Science, began in 1995. Plans to develop a complementary Remote Sensing Core Curriculum took shape at a 1992 NCGIA workshop and later gained support from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). In 2001, NASA commissioned the University of Mississippi to develop a new and greatly expanded remote sensing curriculum in the form of digital courseware equivalent to 30 undergraduate courses (Luccio 2005). The courseware is available for licensing by educational institutions, government agencies, and private firms. Meanwhile, an even more ambitious effort began in 1998 under the auspices of the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS). Motivated in part by a concern that entry-level workers in the geospatial technology industry lacked adequate backgrounds in computer science (Marble 1998), UCGIS emulated the approach and format of the ACM/IEEE computing curricula.

The UCGIS Model Curricula initiative arose from a set of eight education challenges identified at the 1997 UCGIS Summer Assembly in Bar Harbor, Maine. One challenge concluded that "improving GIScience education requires the specification and assessment of curricula for a wide range of student constituencies" (Kemp and Wright 1997, p. 4). A Model Curricula Task Force, chaired by Duane Marble, was formed in 1998. In 2003, the Task Force issued a Strawman Report that presented an ambitious vision of how higher education should prepare students for success in the variety of professions that rely upon geospatial technologies (Marble et al. 2003).

A key distinguishing characteristic of the Model Curricula vision is its expansive and integrative conception of the "Geographic Information Science and Technology" (GIS&T) knowledge domain. As illustrated in Figure 1, GIS&T encompasses three subdomains, including:

* Geographic Information Science, the multidisciplinary research enterprise that addresses the nature of geographic information and the application of geospatial technologies to basic scientific questions;

* Geospatial Technology, the specialized set of information technologies that support data acquisition, data storage and manipulation, data analysis, and visualization of geo-referenced data; and

* Applications of GIS&T, the increasingly diverse uses of geospatial technology in government, industry, and academia. The number and variety of fields that apply geospatial technologies is suggested in Figure 1 by the stack of "various application domains."

Other aspects that distinguish the UCGIS Model Curricula...

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