[gis_info] UW GIS Certificate Program annual call for projects

[Arnone, Harvey]

Hi everyone, just a quick reminder about our annual call for project ideas.  Students are actively discussing projects now with the intention of choosing projects within the next 2-3 weeks.  A few project ideas have been submitted but we're definitely short on projects thus far.  If you have a thought on a project but don't have a lot of time to put something together, providing just a brief statement of your idea will suffice for our purposes at this time.

Thanks to those who have submitted ideas already.  We greatly appreciate it!

   -Harv

From: Arnone, Harvey
Sent: Wednesday, October 14, 2020 11:08 PM
To: 'gis_info at listsmart.osl.state.or.us' <gis_info at listsmart.osl.state.or.us>; 'cps-gis at u.washington.edu' (cps-gis at u.washington.edu) <cps-gis at u.washington.edu>
Subject: UW GIS Certificate Program annual call for projects

The University of Washington Professional and Continuing Education's GIS Certificate program is seeking project ideas for the 2020/2021 academic year.  As in past year, we are soliciting ideas from potential sponsors around the region, including local or regional governments agencies, non-profits, or engineering and consulting firms.  If you have a project idea that might be a good fit for the students of the GIS Certificate Program, we would appreciate hearing from you!

Here's a little bit about what would make a good student project:

  *   Size:  should be appropriate for a 3-4 (maybe 5) student project team
  *   Schedule:  Projects are executed during the Winter and Spring quarters, while Autumn quarter is limited to project selection.  Work on the projects begins in January at the start of Winter quarter. Deliverables are completed and handed over to the sponsor in early June at the conclusion of the program.
  *   Content:  in order to give the students a good learning opportunity, project should include more than data development.  For example, opportunities to perform any of the following help increase the learning value of the experience:  database design, data collection, mapping, analysis, ArcGIS Online map publishing, etc.
  *   Sponsorship:  some of our best projects have been real-world practical projects submitted by organizations like yours from around the region (including, in the past, Washington, Oregon, and Alaska). These projects are typically efforts that the organization has wanted to act on, but until now was unable to address due to their own limited resources.
  *   Time commitment for sponsors:  this does not need to be a great impact on you.  Some students interview their sponsors to assess the needs and requirements, and then work independently from that point forward.  Other projects have very active sponsors who meet several times with the student team, review documents, provide feedback, and receive periodic status reports from the team.
We have found that many organizations have perfect candidate projects in tasks that have been lingering on the back-burner for some time.  Utilizing our student teams is a great way to get some of these small projects off the back-burner and, at the same time, provide valuable experience for the students.  As for quality of results, our program focuses on practical and professional execution of projects in a way that strongly mimics how a project would be executed in the workplace.  We have had great success with the vast majority of our projects and many have gone on to win awards at the annual WAURISA conference and other conferences.

If you have a project in mind, here are the details that we would need to get started:

  *   Sponsor name and contact information
  *   Name of proposed project
  *   Description of proposed project (a short paragraph is ideal)
Students will begin discussing projects towards the end of October, and by late-November all projects will have been selected.  Ideally, we would like to hear from you on or before Monday October 26.  However, if you think of a project later than that, we would still like to hear from you.

If you have any questions or project ideas, please feel free to contact me by replying to this email (@ HARVEY.ARNONE at Seattle.gov<mailto:HARVEY.ARNONE at Seattle.gov> ), and please feel free to forward this to others as you see fit.


Thank you!

 Harvey Arnone
  Instructor, GIS Certificate Program (UW Professional and Continuing Education)
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