GIS Lab Opens
By Mallory Miller
After six years of working on a blueprint, the environmental studies and sciences department have opened a new Geographical Information Systems lab in Varsi Hall.
GIS is software that enables users to generate and overlay different kinds of special data to create maps, including environmental maps. This is a significant improvement to the class GIS in Environmental Science. Students no longer have to use the communication department's computer labs in Kenna Hall.
"It was really frustrating to spend an hour and a half on a lab and then have to completely restart, sometimes more than once, because of system failures," said Samara Haapala, a junior environmental science major.
Students were required to use a Microsoft Windows parallel environment on the Mac desktop computers in Kenna, which caused many glitches with the software.
"We are grateful that the communication department hosted and supported our GIS class in Kenna, but the set-up was not ideal for GIS," said Associate Professor Iris Stewart-Frey. "ArcGIS only runs on PCs. The dual-boot system was finicky at best, in spite of the best efforts of the lab manager and instructors."
The new lab includes PCs, updated GIS software and a surplus of data storage capacity. GIS is now going to be included in upper-division courses, and all environmental majors moving forward will be required to take GIS. Faculty members are currently utilizing it for multiple projects in the environmental sciences, and are allowing undergraduates to help conduct research.
The new lab inspired the environmental studies department to pilot the new course, Introduction to Geographic Information Systems. Stewart-Frey is experimenting with removing most of the lecture and other aspects of the previous GIS course in order to primarily focus on hands-on application in the new one. The course was also changed due to limited seating in the new lab, and the need to teach a minimum of two sections a year.
GIS is an important skill for environmental studies and science majors to acquire because it helps students observe questions from a spatial viewpoint, "whether if that is about the distribution of species, the density of toxic waste sites, the location of vulnerable populations or the most cost-efficient way to get a commodity from one place to another," said Stewart-Frey.
GIS can also be used in other fields such as the social sciences, business, economics, engineering, and environmental studies, sciences and environmental justice.