July 20, 2008

Educating the Next Generation of GIS professionals

What do Starbucks, Wal-Mart, the U.S. Military, the Mississippi Department of Transportation, and NVision Solutions have in common? They all hire Geographic Information Systems (GIS) specialists to solve spatial problems. Interesting to read some stories of just what jobs student interns are given in GIS and geospatial these days. Way back it used to be that the intern would do CAD work all day, babysit a plotter, perhaps help with field work, or do tedious digitizing or data entry hour after hour (like you, I also spent a couple of years as a data troll!) Today, students are getting certification, working with ArcMap and ArcGIS and actually doing hands-on GIS analysis. Read on for a great example of how students in Mississippi are being put to work.

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1 comment:

Kosmos of GIS said...

Well, the question is.. do we need GIS specialist with knowledge in any Geospatial analysis, statistics and some programming skills or just people who are good to press buttons and have very good or exceptional programming background.