Whether you’re interpreting political polls, planning bus routes, or studying wildlife populations, geomatics and Geographic Information Software (GIS) can help you reach your goals. In the spring 2013 semester, Wagner students for the first time were able to take a class introducing them to these powerful methods of employing data that has a spatial reference point.
The students learned by developing projects of their own design. The final presentations were as diverse as the students themselves: Keila McCracken ’14 used her family’s logbooks about weather and deer hunting, dating back to the 1950s, to study the relationship between snow cover and the movements of deer populations in Minnesota. Nick Gibaldi ’14, who works as a lifeguard on the beaches of Suffolk County on Long Island, mapped the relationship among ocean depths, wave height, and tides. Zack Stanley ’15 drew on his experience growing up in the coal mining country in Kentucky to look at human health in those areas. Kevin Ferreira ’13, who has become an immigrant advocate on Staten Island through his work with the Port Richmond Partnership, plotted the residential patterns of ethnic groups on Staten Island.
“There’s tons of data out there,” says Michael Scholl, adjunct professor of anthropology. Pulling a grocery card out of his wallet as an example, he points out that stores, websites, and social media are amassing random facts at an exponential pace. “The hard part is knowing what question to ask,” Scholl remarks. This challenge is what his students are now better equipped to meet.