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At the end of geography Professor Laura Smith's "Urban GIS" seminar, students collaborating with the Community Affairs Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis presented their findings not to classmates, but to a public policy audience in the Minneapolis offices of "the Fed."
"Seminar students have used GIS to map the locations and attributes of mortgage foreclosures in the Twin Cities metro area, and to further investigate housing issues in North Minneapolis, a foreclosure 'hotspot,'" says Smith.
As calculators overtook slide rules and computer word processing eclipsed typewriters, new technologies change the tools and methods of research and education. Because of Macalester's particularly strong courses and lab resources, Mac students and professors are able to utilize the innovative technologies of GPS and GIS to provide valuable information to the community.
 Many people are familiar with GPS (Global Positioning System) as the gizmo in your car from which a disembodied voice gives directions to your driving destination, but its uses extend far beyond that. Developed as a U.S. military technology, GPS uses a transmitter that communicates with orbiting satellites to pinpoint the exact location of that transmitter. GIS (Geographic Information System) can then map information provided by GPS.
Birgit Mühlenhaus, GIS lab instructor, put it this way: "To explore where cornfields are located, you might find which farms are producing corn and use GPS to precisely locate these fields. These data points can then be loaded into a GIS to generate a map showing land use. Next we can incorporate this data with other types of geographical information, such as aerial photography, etc., to answer questions like 'Are cornfields more likely to be located near water bodies? Near urban areas?' etc."
Students and professors are using GPS and GIS in a vast variety of projects:
- Geology Professor Kelly MacGregor and students who work with her in the field use GPS to measure the melt and movement of glaciers in Glacier National Park, Montana. "We put one unit on bedrock and one on the glacier, and calculate the distance between them....Before GPS, we would have had to use surveying equipment like road surveyors use and average the distance over days."
- Biology Professor Dan Hornbach and his students use GPS and GIS to map the distribution of zebra mussels and their habitat in the St. Croix River, including species that are endangered.
- Classics Professor Joe Rife directs an interdisciplinary archaeological program at Kenchreai in Greece, where he studies a harbor dating back to the 1st century C.E., using GPS and GIS to map the architecture and topography of ancient tombs, houses, churches and temples.
- Working at times with fellow students and with geography Professors Laura Smith and Holly Barcus, Orlando Martinez '06 used GPS and GIS in a number of ways: to develop asset maps for the Parks and Recreation Department of Roseville, Minn., to identify Minneapolis residents qualifying for air conditioner and refrigerator replacement, and to catalogue zoning requirements for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.
Even some of the newest faculty did not learn to use GIS until graduate school, but many Mac students become proficient as undergrads, beginning with Geography 225, "Introduction to GIS," taught by Mühlenhaus and Barcus, whose own recent research utilizes GIS to study the changing ethnic and racial composition of rural places. Many GIS students continue with Geography 364, "GIS Concepts and Applications," which is working with the Minnesota Historical Society on its History of Lake Street project. Students are investigating changes in land use, demographics and neighborhood composition, and developing overview maps.
The campus GIS teaching lab is in Carnegie Hall, but the technology should become more broadly available sometime this year. The college expects to obtain more extensive licensing for the campus, which will enable students to work with GIS beyond the lab, in dorms and even off campus, on any PC--it doesn't run on Macs--with the capacity for the software. |
