The Utah GIS higher education community (including public and private universities, and community colleges) is seeking input from employers across the state on how we can best prepare our students for their careers. If you are involved in the hiring of entry-level GIS employees (past, present, or future), please take 10 minutes to complete this anonymous survey; if not, please pass it along to those who do hire. Your input here will help to shape GIS education in Utah for years to come!
Over the past several years, the Utah State Office of Education, ESRI, AGRC, UGIC, and the Utah GIS Alliance have worked to introduce GIS technology into Utah K-12 classrooms. Spatial reasoning, map-making, geographic awareness, technical skills building can't start early enough, right?
The Utah K-12 GIS Educator Mentoring Program is designed to help K-12 educators link up with GIS professionals in a mentoring relationship.
For more information on becoming a mentor or the search page for educators interested in utilizing a mentor:
Join us in Southern Utah this spring to share your latest successes, learn new skills, connect with the industry, and meet your friends in the Utah GIS community. A special focus this year will be on discussing the strategic plan being developed for the Utah Geospatial Infrastructure, and the roles each of us can play in making the most of geographic information in Utah.
The Utah Geographic Information Council is implementing an online registration for keeping track of UGIC membership. This should be much easier to use and maintain over the coming years. We hope that you will take a moment in the next few days to complete/update your user registration at the new Utah GIS Portal website: http://gis.utah.gov. Register or login (returning users) from the USER LOGIN menu located on the lower left side of the main page. Be sure to check the UGIC Membership box during registration or, if you've already created a user account on the site, by editing your User Profile's membership/subscriptions tab. That way we'll continue to get information to you regarding upcoming events like the upcoming 2008 UGIC GIS Conference* in Cedar City, April 21-25, 2008 and the 2008 UGIC board elections.
Being on the UGIC membership list has always been very simple. Just attending the UGIC annual conference or sending us an email membership request was enough to get you on our list. Unfortunately, we have several hundred members who have become unreachable over the years because their contact information has become outdated. Also, we've only collected very simple information in the past and we're excited about the possibilities of collecting a more robust set of information about Utah GIS users in a central location, accessible to the Utah GIS Community.
As part of the new user registration process, you will be able to:
- provide your basic contact information to UGIC and other registered users**; - declare membership in UGIC (there is a checkbox for becoming a member); - subscribe to a variety of GIS related email lists; and - declare your interest in a variety of technology, data, and coordination interest areas. - view and contact other users with similar interests.
Returning users can login at any time and update any information provided at registration and can also indicate an interest in becoming a GIS mentor for the UGIC sponsored K-12 GIS mentoring program. We also expect to integrate conference registration into the Utah GIS Portal site soon.
We're trying to continue to keep the UGIC membership process simple but, at the same time, to put the responsibility for keeping member information current in your hands, the UGIC members. We think that the new Utah GIS Portal, maintained jointly by UGIC and AGRC, will prove to be a good resource for tracking and maintaining UGIC membership and hope you'll agree.
Thanks for your help keeping our records current and Happy New Year!
-- The UGIC Board
Notes:
** email addresses provided as part of the registration process will not be published as part of user profile pages although other registered users will be able to send an email to you on a one-to-one basis only
