Nancy Hultquist announced the Spring meeting, Saturday 21 May 2005 at Central Washington University's Biology/Chemistry Building.

Chip Dodd led a roundtable discussion on the status of and issues facing Geography in Washington community colleges. He circulated the third in his annual series of reports on which courses are being offered at which campuses, and which campuses have one or more full-time geographers on staff. The discussion and observations included:

Everett, Grays Harbor, Green River, Olympic, and South Puget Sound Community Colleges have GIS programs in Engineering Technology or Information Technology, outside of academic Geography programs. Most other community colleges have found it difficult to sustain sufficient demand for GIS courses.

At Green River, many of the students in GIS courses already have baccalaureate degrees, and are seeking a certificate for career development. Those who do not have a baccalaureate degree are often seeking an Associate degree for career development. Though many relevant jobs require a baccalaureate degree, some graduates can use internships to gain experience that will stand in lieu of that degree. CWU and WWU geographers have developed a relationship with Education programs to have a course or two (human geog, NW geog, world regional geog) to be optional or required for Social Studies education majors. Shoreline has some geography courses that are part of the required diversity course list for the Associate degree.

Kerry Lyste presented some results of his work identifying and locating "Cultural Resources of the Stillaguamish Tribe". This tribe was formally recognized only in 1976, and is working to bolster its understanding of its own culture, geography, and history.

Kerry Lyste presents his use of GIS with the Native Americans database.

The North American Graves Repatriation Act has financed some research on past building and burial sites, in which Kerry has been involved. Using written records, oral histories, and tours with tribal elders, Kerry has photographed and mapped 130 sites, helping to document how the tribe's ancestors made use of the large Stillaguamish River Valley. Kerry presented some of the data collection, technical, and social challenges he has faced in this work.

Ron Cihon, Manager, Cartography & GIS Manager (Geographic Services) for Washington State Department of Transportation, presented "What Is a Road?

The Need to Consider Deeper Issues for GIS-T". He listed several innovative and successful DOT products: event mapping, query-based analysis for anyone in the Department, innovative graphical user interfaces, 3-D animation (the group requested that he e-mail us links to some of these features). However, he suggested that the low rates of GIS adoption across the whole of departments of transportation, the rare use of GIS in "mission-critical" activities, problems of system interoperability across the "transportation life cycle" -- all point to some severe and systematic shortcomings in GIS-T as currently conceptualized and configured. Attempts to reduce these shortcomings have focused on data, metadata, and protocols.

Ron Cihon--Manager, Cartography & GIS, Washington State DOT, Olympia Presented What is a Road?  -- The need to Consider Deeper Issues of GIS-T

Ron suggested that GIS will likely remain insufficient to these organization- and mission-integration tasks until basic issues are resolved regarding transportation ontologies. For example, analysts working at each stage of the transportation life cycle have a different sense of what is a road. He presented this issue to the university faculty in the audience, challenging the academic community to develop solutions and to prod the commercial sector to take up possible solutions. In response to questions, Ron spoke to his hiring preferences as a GIS manager. He emphasized that he needs staff who can program and develop GIS: the off-the-shelf systems are becoming sufficiently straightforward that specialists in other fields can use GIS, without a Geography or GIS background. He needs people who can develop GIS-based tools for non-geography specialists in other units in DOT, people who are good at programming as well as cartographic design and GIS use.

Notes by JW Harrington

Photos by Nancy Hultquist