The administration of academic GIS certificates: A survey of program coordinators

Abstract

The academic GIS certificate has emerged as the most ubiquitous credential representing specialized knowledge and competency associated with geographic information systems, geographic information science, and related areas. While available at hundreds of public and private colleges and universities, GIS certificates are tremendously diverse in content, organization, and delivery. This article explores GIS certificates offered at U.S. institutions of higher education through an inventory of 385 certificate programs supplemented by in‐depth interviews of program faculty at 46 colleges or universities. Our findings are presented within larger themes tied to the quality, sustainability, and support of programs across topics that include marketing, curriculum design, delivery mode, faculty oversight, and institutional support.

Geographic Information Science education at Esri Development Center institutions

“…Graduate certificates are earned after taking graduate‐level courses, usually for around 15 to 30 credits. These credentials are meant to supplement career goals or advance understanding of a specific topic, and are completed in various stages, modes, and temporalities (Wikle & Sinton, 2020). Undergraduate certificates are generally earned alongside a Bachelor's degree, but this is not a universal requirement.…”

GIS-KG: building a large-scale hierarchical knowledge graph for geographic information science

“…Research tends to focus on trends or new techniques in one area alone, such as spatial multicriteria analysis (Malczewski and Jankowski 2020), or susceptibility mapping (Ghorbanzadeh et al 2020). Thus it is a persistent challenge for GIS curricula in higher education to be comprehensive or current (Wikle and Sinton 2020). Only through AI-enhanced techniques can the already-large and expanding field of GIS and its applications be monitored.…”

Choosing GIS graduate programs from afar: Chinese students' perspectives

“…Recently, the numbers of master's, professional master's, and PhD programs as well as certificates in GIS have been growing extensively in response to the rising number of students pursuing postgraduate education in GIS (Revell & Benfield, 2022; Wikle & Sinton, 2020). To date, there are over 200 GIS certification and degree programs in the United States and more than 400 programs globally (GIS Geography, 2022; GISphere Contributors, 2022).…”