Masters degrees are for research. Or application building (like how to
do watershed modelling, geospatial analysis of crime locations, geostats
for spatial distribution of health). They are not skills-based. So no
"Web GIS I, II"; "Geospatial System Architecture"; "WAMP/LAMP"; and
"Opensource ecology for geography".... These are primarily CS based.
Geography programs are not CS-based, at least not in North America.
BTW, CS grad programs don't teach skills either, which is annoying. For
example, you can't find a course in JAVA language or IDE for Django.
Instead you find a course in Principles of Programming, which teaches
whatever language is interesting at the moment. These are undergraduate
courses, so likely not allowed in a grad program. More importantly, the
kinds of courses we'd like are viewed by CS profs as SERVICE courses,
IOW, a service to other departments for which a CS prof gets no credit.
So you can't easily throw in a couple of CS courses.
Remember also that geography programs are largely populated with
GEOGRAPHERS--you know, fluvial geomorphologists, soil scientists,
climatologists, paleoecologists, and researchers in cultural,
transportation, economic, historical, development, .... geography. Any
adjuncts are teaching World Cities and Introduction to Earth Sciences.
In any geography department, there are maybe two people who teach the
GIS/geomatics courses. One or both of these two are using GIS as a tool
and not expanding the underlying systems. So your hydrologist, who's
teaching all the GIS courses, wants grad students to build better hydro
models. It's not Department chairs who are slow to adapt--we GIS profs
are just not high in the hierarchy of geography (who's the highest?
Social theorists). Contrast that with the Assoc of American Geographers
in which the GIS special interest group is the largest (although the
geography of wine specialty group always looked very interesting).
What we are supposed to be teaching is critical thinking of geospatial
problems (I'm sure my fellow wankers will question whether we do that
well). Durable ideas. And "how" to learn things as opposed to learning
things. The idea is that the technologies change too rapidly for us to
focus our attention on a single suite of tools, although we find
ourselves teaching far too much ArcGIS or the flavour of the month RS
software. What our programs do a terrible job at is critical thinking
around computation (although I find that CS grad students do a similarly
terrible job). Not only can't geography students do server side things
easily, geography students don't even know how to approach server side
problems. I'd love to have students who do the things that are mentioned
in the listserv. I no longer need desktop stuff; my research is back-end
stuff (with social theory mixed in!). However, my courses are mostly
filled with my colleagues' students, who want the applications. In other
words, teach my student how to use ArcGIS. (The grad students don't even
want to learn GIScience, like issues in spatial data uncertainty or
impacts of scale on analysis. No, it's all about button pushing.)
BTW, if anyone wants a masters degree in lovely Montreal, let's talk.
You Americans are expensive, being international students, but we might
be able to work something out.
Overall, the best option for skills are post-grad diploma programs, so
you went the right track for the GIS knowledge. The best is Nova Scotia
Community College.
Renee
DNR wrote:
Greetings,
I've noticed many grad programs in GIS/Geography, etc are a bit
stuck... in like 2003. (I'm no expert, just holding a GIS Certificate)
With perhaps only ONE "webGIS" course offered, I write off many
programs as ineligible to fulfill my learning needs for programming
and open source webGIS tools, in addition to the standard ESRI fare
which seems like yesterday's required knowledge. ESRI rocks on many
levels, and should be included... but let's not debate that, PLEASE.
Focus: Does anyone know of an MA grad program that balances cutting
edge webGIS programming exposure with vanilla desktop analysis
curriculum? Am I making sense? It seems to be one of those cases
where the slow-to-adapt university Directors need to bring in some of
you all as adjuncts to teach what is wanted in the marketplace...
I think throwing in some CS classes may be a cheap shortcut for what
is really needed by GIS grads - open source coding ecology... or some
such. You all know better than I do. Besides a mashup of education in
the Bay Area, which may well round out my needs.... is there a MA
program out there that is up to date in webGIS curriculum?
If you were directing a MA in Geography/Neogeography, what would your
course descriptions sound like to produce a graduate who could go
equally in either direction: backend programming or desktop analysis?
The job descriptions I see out there require more programming
knowledge than I see listed in many GIS-related MA program's coursework.
At your leisure, offlist responses, if you need to.
Thanks so much for your time,
D
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