Item No. 1 of 1

INVESTIGATOR: Tesfaye, S.

PERFORMING INSTITUTION:
LINCOLN UNIVERSITY
JEFFERSON CITY, MISSOURI 65101

DISSEMINATING GEOSPATIAL INFORMATION SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY KNOWLEDGE TO K-12 EDUCATORS AND YOUTH

NON-TECHNICAL SUMMARY: Geospatial information science and technology (GIST) is a fairly new discipline that is rapidly evolving and in high demand in the labor market. GIST has become an integral part of our modern day society, for example, in transportation, in agriculture (precision farming), in spatial information dissemination, etc. While GIST education is conducted at post-secondary level in colleges and universities, it is noticeably lacking from the K-12 curriculum. There probably are multiple reasons for this absence; however, the primary culprit is the lack of integration of geography in the high school curriculum. Another plausible explanation could be that K-12 educators may not be well versed in GIST. Since K-12 students are not introduced to the concept of GIST early on it becomes a foreign concept to them when they first encounter it in college. This lack of exposure to GIST in the K-12 is hindering students from pursuing the discipline in college and/or as a career. To address this lack of GIST exposure in the K-12 curriculum and reach a larger audience this proposal is targeting K-12 educators. A summer workshop will be conducted for the K-12 educators where they will be offered a crash course in geographic information system, global positing system, remote sensing, and small unmanned aerialsystems. More importantly, these educators will be provided with laboratory exercise modules in the various aspects of GIST that they can successfully communicate to their students with the resources that they have at their schools.

OBJECTIVES: The goal of this proposal is,(a) disseminate geospatial information science and technology (GIST)knowledge to K-12 students through their educators and raise their level of awareness in the discipline and (b)provide incentives to Lincoln University (MO) undergraduate students to be involved in the GIST program.The objectives of this proposal are three fold: 1) To increase the level of awareness and geospatial information science and technologyknowledge of K-12 educators.2) To expose K-12 students to GIST through workshop participants (educators)by providing grade appropriate hands-on laboratory exercises.3) To educate the next generation of agriculture and environmental science undergraduates at Lincoln University (MO), particularly minorities, who upon graduation would adequately be versed in GIST skills.