Andrew Shears

From Absaroka to Yazoo: The 125 United States That Could’ve Been

Andrew Shears — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 05:35:37 +0000

Most of my life, I've daydreamed about history -- not so much the incredible depth of historical events that have already occurred, good thinking as that might be. No, I've constantly fictionalized history by changing the outcome of one event here and there and exploring the possibilities of what would have come next. Sometimes I come up with some utterly ridiculous progressions on these alternate timelines of whole new worlds based on relatively minor changes.

Though I admit my imagination was far more active in my youth, I've had a little help getting things going again... mainly, of all things, Wikipedia. A treasure trove of information, the online encyclopedia that anyone can edit has tons of information on historical minutiae that can be used to pass idle time. One of my favorite things to read about, oddly, is defunct sports leagues and teams. These always make me think of the random "what if" questions: What if the USFL hadn't failed in its anti-trust suit against the NFL? (It won, but was only awarded $1.) What if, instead of Green Bay's Packers, that the Muncie Flyers had survived as a small-market team to the present? What if the Federal League, or World Hockey Association, or ABA had made it? Sure, the world of sports is limited in application, but think: if something so arbitrary can spark the imagination, what about larger world events like World War II or the American Civil War? The possibilities are seemingly endless.

I'm certainly not the only one who's done this. It seems like a good third of all Star Trek episodes deal with timeline issues like this. In fact, there's a whole genre of literature, called "alternate history," dedicated to exploring these very possibilities. Harry Turtledove is probably the king of this genre in the US. Turtledove explored an alternate reality in which the south won the American Civil War, all the way through present day. Philip K. Dick's contribution (The Man in the High Castle), a book in which he explores the opposite possible outcome of World War II, is probably the most well known in the genre. Even Newt Gingrich as gotten in on the action. His book.... wasn't completely terrible, as much as it pains me to admit it, though it's probably more the subject matter than the writing.

Recently, on Wikipedia, I discovered a list that really intrigued me like none other: the List of U.S. State Partition Proposals. For a geographer/cartographer who's a U.S.-specialist and who's interested in alternate history, this was Kryptonite for my productivity. From this list, I stumbled onto listings for U.S. Territories that Failed to Become States and the listing for the hypothetical 51st State. I even came across a nice little book called Lost States, a humorous account from Michael Trinklein that briefly explores a number of random states that never quite happened.

After reading all of these things, and all of the linked pages connected -- that's where Wikipedia really sucks you in -- I, of course, allowed my own mind to wander and I came up with the beginnings of a historical geography narrative for the United States of my own, drawing on each of these sources. How could I spell this out? Well, I'm no novelist, because I just really don't have the imagination or skills necessary to put together a story in that format. However, I can make maps here and there, and I firmly believe that maps can do a pretty good job telling a story.

What did I end up with? My own alternate history U.S. map of 125 states (click on it for a bigger version):

Of course, as the map has stated right in the legend, this is NOT a proposal of any sort, it's only a fictional work based loosely on history. Depending on my free time in the next few weeks, I'm hoping to post a summary of how I came up with this map (in other words, my timeline), and a brief capsule about each of these newly created states. I might even make a GIS shapefile so that I could do some rudimentary analysis. That'd be a bizarro GIS article to write, wouldn't it?

Who knew fictional geography could be so much fun?

UWFox’s Geography Offerings for 2012-13

Andrew Shears — Fri, 25 Nov 2011 06:00:59 +0000

I was only on the job about a month at UWFox before I got an email from the associate dean asking me for my proposed curriculum for the next academic year. Wait, what? You mean I get to decide what we're offering in geography for an entire school year? That's nuts! I'm not a department chair or anything, and I've certainly never designed or proposed a curriculum. Hell, I haven't even completed one semester as a full-fledged faculty member yet...

Well, that's one of the many interesting responsibilities that a stand-alone geographer faces. Don't get me wrong, it's certainly not a bad thing, it was just a bit unexpected, and I was pretty unprepared for doing it. I mean, by my own admission, I'm a little bit too full of optimism and naïveté, so imagine all of the possibilities I could come up with! Bizarre course offerings that I certainly find interesting but no one else would? That sounds great!

Okay, so I was a little more practical than that. Luckily, my associate dean included a template from the current academic year, which was considered the "base" for the geography program at UWFox. He also issued a friendly request to all departments to trim anything that we could, since there're all kinds of budget shortfalls right now. Oh joy.

First, just a few pointers for understanding the table...

GEO 101 = Cultural Geography (a basic intro-to-human class)
GEO 123 = Intro to Physical - Weather & Climate, which includes a twice weekly lab
GEO 106 = Intro to GIS, which includes a once weekly lab
GEO 110 = World Regional Geography
GEO 124 = Intro to Physical - Landforms, which includes a twice weekly lab
GEO 170 = Disasters
CR = Credit
CH = Contact Hours, by which UWC determines workload. I need 24 per year to keep the administration happy and the paychecks rolling in.

So, here's the base table I received, which is identical to the schedule for 2011-2012, the current academic year:

Sem	Course	Sect	CR	CH	Instructor
FALL	GEO 101	E001	3	3	Shears
FALL	GEO 123	E001	3	3	Shears
FALL	GEO 123	E041	2	4.8	Shears
FALL
SPR	GEO 106	E001	3	3	Shears
SPR	GEO 106	E041	1	2.4	Shears
SPR	GEO 124	E001	3	3	Shears
SPR	GEO 124	E041	2	4.8	Shears
SPR	GEO 170	E001	1.5	1.5	Shears
SPR	GEO 170	E001	1.5	0	Johnson, B

There are few academics in the world who would call this schedule a bad deal, and it's been working quite well for this year. Two lectures and one lab for fall, two lectures and two labs for spring, plus a team-taught GEO 170 course with Beth, the geologist. Pretty nice, actually!

But, I'd be lying if I told you that the template was 100% ideal. For one, in that template, I spend an incredible amount of time teaching physical geography courses. I'm certainly plenty equipped to do this, but it's not really my area of highest expertise. In other words, it seems like a bit of a misallocation of resources. The other side to this is, because of the contact hours equation, if I'm locked into GEO 123 and GEO 124 each year, it doesn't really give me any latitude to offer variety beyond GEO 101 and GEO 106. I had really hoped to start building a more comprehensive offering in geography at UWFox, and following the template didn't really do that.

So, I dug deeply into the UW Colleges course catalog to see what was there for me to pick up and fix this little issue. I figured out that we had a course, GEO 125, that combines GEO 123 & 124 into a single semester, which makes a lot more sense given my own depth in physical geography. At the same time, to press the efficiency point (more bang for the buck, so to speak), I put the GEO 125 in both fall and spring semester, but gave each section two labs so that enrollment could increase, because the class always hits capacity. I proposed hiring an Instructional Academic Staff member (read: adjunct) to teach two of the labs, opening me up to teach World Regional Geography. Aha! I had cracked the code! I had figured out how to increase enrollment while diversifying our offerings! A parade would be thrown in my honor, almost certainly!

Here's the schedule as I first submitted it:

Sem	Course	Sect	CR	CH	Instructor
FALL	GEO 101	E001	3	3	Shears
FALL	GEO 125	E001	3	3	Shears
FALL	GEO 125	E041	2	4.8	Shears
FALL	GEO 125	E042	2	4.8	TBA
FALL
FALL
SPR	GEO 106	E001	3	3	Shears
SPR	GEO 106	E041	1	2.4	Shears
SPR	GEO 110	E001	3	3	Shears
SPR	GEO 125	E001	3	3	Shears
SPR	GEO 125	E041	2	4.8	TBA
SPR	GEO 125	E042	2	4.8	TBA
SPR	GEO 170	E001	3	3	Shears/Johnson

Of course, you might notice that, despite the increased potential enrollment that geography would be receiving, there are more contact hours in this proposal to fill. That single point led to this proposal being sent back from the associate dean, with a polite note saying that while he was impressed with my ability to increase potential enrollment he, in fact, was trying to decrease instructional costs, not increase them... and to please try again. Bummer.

So, I pulled it apart and messed with it again. Oddly enough, I partially enjoyed it, because it was like playing with a big Sudoku puzzle. Every time I moved one class, it messed up something else by costing too many contact hours, or maybe suddenly I didn't have enough on the schedule. After a while, I came to a big pile of conclusions:

That I only needed to offer GEO 125 (Physical Geography) once per year.
That GEO 106 (GIS) needed to be in fall to coincide with GIS Day.
That GEO 110 should be in the schedule because it attracts majors, and that I should really be the one teaching GEO 110 because of its ability to convert students into geography majors.
That I'd really like to get another class in one of my specialties.
That I'd really like to see one more class in the schedule that could create new majors.
That GEO 341 (US & Canada) was on the books and fit the above two points.

I knew GEO 341 might be tricky, since this is a two-year liberal arts school designed for transfer students, but I talked to the associate dean about it directly. He suggested that it was totally possible as long as I offered it as a NODE class (non-online distance education), which I don't have a problem with. So, how did I try to make all of those things happen? Observe:

Sem	Course	Sect	CR	CH	Instructor
FALL	GEO 101	E001	3	3	Shears
FALL	GEO 106	E001	3	3	Shears
FALL	GEO 106	E041	1	2.4	Shears
FALL	GEO 341	E001	3	3	Shears
SPR	GEO 125	E001	3	3	Shears
SPR	GEO 125	E041	2	4.8	Shears
SPR	GEO 110	E001	3	3	Shears
SPR	GEO 170	E001	3	3	Shears

I put GEO 106 in Fall with 101 and 341. I moved GEO 125 to spring, along with 110 and 170. Dumping the second section of 125 in the fall meant that I could not only take on 110, but also 341. Lots of classes offered that bring geography majors into the fold, and all classes that really fit my strength areas as an instructor. Plus, a really balanced schedule from one semester to the next. The associate dean signed off on it, and so did the campus curriculum committee. Not bad, Shears!

You'd think that'd be the end of the story, but it's not. At the UW-Colleges, even though I'm sort of the ad hoc department chair at the UWFox campus, I do still have to answer to the UW-Colleges Department of Geography and Geology as well. It's an interesting arrangement. Either way, after it was approved by this campus, it went to my department chair. Now before it seems like I'm flushing away my career in a blog post, let me say that the chair had absolutely nothing but good constructive feedback for the proposal. He only suggested one change, which actually made perfect sense.

The GEO 341 course should be moved to spring, and swapped with GEO 170. Why? The reasoning is crystal clear: GEO 341 has a pre-requisite of at least one semester of college work. Because the UW-Colleges have a pretty strong attrition rate after the first year due to early transfers, it would help the enrollment of that course to move to a semester when just about everyone on campus has completed their first semester. So with that, bingo!

I present the UWFox geography curriculum for 2012-13, my first ever curriculum:

Sem	Course	Sect	CR	CH	Instructor
FALL	GEO 101	E001	3	3	Shears
FALL	GEO 106	E001	3	3	Shears
FALL	GEO 106	E041	1	2.4	Shears
FALL	GEO 170	E001	3	3	Shears
SPR	GEO 125	E001	3	3	Shears
SPR	GEO 125	E041	2	4.8	Shears
SPR	GEO 110	E001	3	3	Shears
SPR	GEO 341	E001	3	3	Shears

Yes, I'm probably far prouder of this than I ever should be. It's the little things, really.

Promoting UWFox Geography, Fall 2011: An Active Geo-Adventurers Club

Andrew Shears — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 18:12:03 +0000

The Geo-Adventurers Club is a group that's assembled as a bit of a hybrid of folks that are interested in geology and geography and folks that are interested in outdoors activities like camping and canoeing. Like our academic department, this group has been largely dormant for a few years, so we've started from scratch here as well.

Our main goal with the Geo-Adventurers is to get students active in extra-curricular activities. In the case of this club, most of those activities involve getting down and dirty with the earth, which provides a natural link to the geoscience curriculum at UWFox. But again, first goal is involvement, and anything that happens after that is icing on the cake.

We started out at the UWFox Beginning of the Year Picnic back in September. We had a table set up for the Geo-Adventurers with a sign-up sheet, advertised with a simple poster. Of course, because we hadn't done anything with the club yet at UWFox (having been there only a matter of a couple of weeks) the poster included imagery from earlier clubs and classes we'd led:

That poster eventually made its way into the geography and geology classroom at UWFox, where it still stands as a beacon for the Geo-Adventurers, promoting the club day-in and day-out to existing geoscience students.

But, let's be honest. Many of our geoscience students, especially this semester, are in our classes not because of interest in the content, but because they needed X requirement, or because Y advisor recommended it. We needed to broaden our approach to attract an audience.

The first step was a simple VBBS slide. Simple to do, and it hits the entire campus:

Then, a nice big colorful poster for the club's traditional bulletin board space:

...plus similarly designed handbills for around the hallways:

I put a QR Code on these posters and screens that links directly to the club's Facebook group in hopes that students would join and be instantly plugged in with group events and communications. Unfortunately, Facebook's groups are a little weird about connecting directly from smartphones, so that didn't work as well as I had hoped. I'm still trying to figure out what to do with that one.

Of course, nothing matches promotion like actually getting students out to do stuff. On November 5, we took a fun spelunking tour out to the caves at Ledge View Nature Center in Chilton:

...and helping Boy Scouts get geology merit badges this past Saturday:

Plus, we've got plenty of things planned in the months ahead. The best part is? This club is FUN.

Earlier posts in this series:

Promoting UWFox Geography, Fall 2011: Marketing Spring Courses

Andrew Shears — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 18:11:50 +0000

While we may have gotten some attention from our various posters, it's crucial to translate that attention into something more. In our case, "something more" is enrollment. Let's face it: higher education is, for better or for worse, all about the numbers. If our enrollment suffers, it's likely to be curtains for budget and for fun upper-level classes. However, if enrollment grows, so does our department. The other, even more crucial point is, of course, that both geography and geology are fields that have to recruit from within. More enrollees give us more chance to bring students to the "dark side."

My first action in this department was to produce a few flyers to post around the school about coming courses in geography. I didn't make one for Landforms (GEO 124) because past enrollment history shows that it will fill no matter what. I did, however make a couple for GIS because it hasn't been offered on the campus for a few years, and enrollment history was mixed. The first was aimed at a more general audience, focusing on the most likely experience that many students have with GIS, which is Google Earth:

The other poster I created was for a very focused group. UWFox has a very strong anthropology and archaeology program, and GIS is rapidly becoming a very big deal in those fields. I created this poster, which I posted around the anthropology classrooms, aimed directly at attracting those majors.

For our third poster, I advertised our new Disasters class, which Beth and I are fortunate enough to team-teach this coming spring as an "Interdisciplinary Studies" science course. Though the tagline has proved mildly shocking for some students, it's really drawn interest!

Beth came up with a pretty fun (if grim) poster using the same template and idea:

So, that was the first wave. I soon realized, though, that anyone can do posters and hang them on the wall. That doesn't mean that everyone does, but it's a pretty simple way to promote. I figured it was time to add a little bit to that strategy, in hopes that a strategy asking for simple involvement would ultimately encourage the engagement of registering.

To do this, I gathered two maps, one world map and one of the United States. I also bought five boxes of map pins, and printed off a simple poster....

...and combined those together into a whimsical interactive display, asking students where they'd like to travel this summer, and connecting that to our course offerings:

While admittedly the connection to enrolling in our courses might be weaker, the display has still drawn student interest and interaction, and having previously uninterested students interact with a map is certainly positive for any geography program.

Another important tool for increasing enrollment for Geography is Geography Awareness Week. I don't know if The Gipper had this in mind when he created it but GAW's timing at the end of November is perfect for hitting up students during registration for spring semester. This year at UWFox, I didn't feel like I had my feet under me enough to put together a gigantic series of GAW events, so I stuck with our GIS Day and one slide for the virtual bulletin boards around campus:

Compared to the standard PowerPoint template slide that the VBBS receives, this slide is a bit more colorful and eye-catching. I honestly don't know if it had many results, because getting a read on student reaction to those bulletins is strangely difficult to do.

Promoting UWFox Geography, Fall 2011: Growing interest in the discipline and, hence, our little department

Andrew Shears — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 18:11:36 +0000

By raising the (quite low) awareness of what geography is as a discipline, it raises the potential for interest from students. By growing interest with potential students, we've got a better chance at increasing the enrollment, therefore awareness is important in this job.

The first step I took was to begin developing a logo for our program. Now, let's be blunt: I suck at logo design, always have, always will. My logos all look the same and they all look ridiculous. In this case, yeah, it definitely looks the same as an earlier effort because I simply ripped off the globe from one of my earlier projects. It is what it is, but my price is right (read: free) in this case. So, here's the logo:

Yeah, it's not great. Yes, that's a semi-3D map rolled in the background with a 2D rock hammer. I readily admit to these sins, for which I should certainly pay some sore of penance. But, for now, it works. It gives us some sort of an identity, for better or worse, to build on... at least until I get some better inspiration. We've put the logo on our Department Facebook Page (which has very few followers, though we haven't promoted it at all) and on several of our posters.

From here, I put together a couple of relatively simple posters that sought different ways to show what geography was, preferably in a way that was on a plane students could relate to. Given my discovery of the downright amazing craft beer culture found in my new homeland, my first effort was this map of the Breweries of Wisconsin (click on it for a huge version with more detail):

That was pretty successful, drawing quite a bit of interested looks from students throughout the first few weeks it was hanging up. So, to that, I added a version of my rather infamous United States of Television map across the hall (again, click for a giant version):

Much like its appearance online, this poster immediately brought great debate from passersby who wanted to discuss the intricacies of why "Happy Days" and not "That 70s Show," and why "Frasier" is a more logical choice than "Twin Peaks." It got people talking, which is always step one!

Not to be outdone, my dear colleague Beth created a similar display for geology, creating a poster called "The Geology of Twinkies" based on the book Twinkie Deconstructed, and hence catapulting that tome to the top of my to-read list. I don't have an image file of it, but I'll get one and add it here soon. Of course, with the poster's (true) assertion that many ingredients inside of Twinkies are mined from the earth, it has really caught student attention.

That's the whole point.

Promoting UWFox Geography, Fall 2011

Andrew Shears — Sun, 20 Nov 2011 18:09:30 +0000

I've certainly learned a lot from my first semester as a full-time, tenure-track faculty member at UWFox. It's been an adventure, and almost always a very enjoyable trip. One thing that sticks out as notable in this journey has been assuming the duties of what the AAG calls a "stand-alone geographer." Now, I have to be clear: I am not really alone, technically. I'm part of the University of Wisconsin Colleges Department of Geography and Geology, which consists of around 20 faculty and IAS on our 13 different campuses, but I see those folks maybe twice per semester. This department has two faculty based here: Beth, our geologist, and yours truly. While I'm not completely alone in the department per se, in the case of UWFox, I am THE geographer. Even Beth has a couple of semi-colleagues, with folks trained in geology working in the engineering and astronomy departments on campus. As for me, well... I'm it. It's certainly a different spot for me. I've never been the only geographer. I even grew up with one! (my mom is a geomorphologist)

This peculiar situation means that, as the only geographer, I'm responsible for everything related to the geography at the school, including awareness, planning, curriculum, you name it. Of course, this week, I worked with a local GIS user group to plan and promote a GIS Day event, which ended up being pretty damn successful. In fact, it was looking back during that promotional process -- of an event that itself was promotional in nature -- that made me realize that I've done A LOTof that since I've been at UWFox... enough to justify a new blog entry highlighting my latest work as a PR officer. It's just one of the many hats of a stand-alone geographer, the experience for which I've now started a separate blog category to explore.

Publicity has proven important to bringing our mission to the forefront, because in many ways we are starting from scratch. After the long tenure of legendary geography and geology professors, our disciplines were in relative limbo for several years. Combine that with the relatively low enrollment "life-span" that we have at a two-year college, and the institutional memory of geography and geology here was pretty much dormant. In some ways, I feel like this semester has been a lot of me screaming "HEY! WE'RE HERE, DAMMIT!" And you know, that's okay!

Thus far, beyond the big promotional hubbabaloo that GIS Day was in and of itself, the publicity efforts have been focused on basically three different prongs:

I've got a lot of other ideas that I'm going to work through as time progresses, but that's what I've done so far. So, click on one of those links, and let's take a look.

GIS Day 2011 at UWFox: Success!

Andrew Shears — Thu, 17 Nov 2011 20:26:14 +0000

Yes, GIS Day at UWFox was a smashing success!

We had a total of 76 people attend the event, including faculty, staff and community members. This shattered the FVGISUG's earlier record attendance of 23 set last year. Of those 76, at least 63 were students, and 44 of those students completed the worksheet I created to encourage engagement with the presenters. Not bad!

Of course, getting them engaged was only the first step. I had quite a few students asking me about our GIS course for next semester, and four or so of them even expressed interest in GIS as a career! If we get any one of those to seriously follow up on their feelings, then everything was more than worth the effort.

The presentations included posters, videos, PowerPoint Presentations and interactive displays:

Posters

What is GIS and what kind of careers are available in GIS? (UWFox Geography)
Storm damage mapping from the damaging September 2, 2011 storm (City of Appleton GIS)
Winnebago County Supervisory District Redistricting Options (Winnebago County GIS)
Fire Response Time Data for Appleton (City of Appleton GIS)
Wisconsin Senate and Assembly Redistricting Plans (North Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission)
The Fox River Heritage Trail Planning and Mapping poster (North Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission)
Traffic Counts and Traffic Accident Maps in Appleton (City of Appleton GIS)
Recreation Trail Plans and Maps for the Fox Cities (North Central Wisconsin Regional Planning Commission)
Minority population data by 2011 Census Block, Appleton (City of Appleton GIS)
County Highway Maps (Winnebago County GIS)
Wind Farm Planning for Crane River Area (Town of Greenville GIS)
Election Ward Plans for Little Chute (Village of Little Chute GIS)
Wisconsin Utility Provision and Electrical Grid Mapping (Town of Greenville GIS)
Storm damage mapping from the devastating April 11, 2011 storm (Winnebago County GIS)
What to do now that you're interested in GIS (UWFox Geography)

PowerPoint Presentations and Videos

Historical progression, through aerial photos, of land use around the current UWFox Campus (Winnebago County GIS)
Introducing the Storm Data Tracker (Winnebago County GIS)
Esri's "GIS is Evolving" video (City of Appleton GIS)

Interactive Demonstrations

Winnebago County GIS WINGS Property Profiler
City of Appleton Online GIS
Town of Greenville Online GIS
Google Earth
ArcGIS.com
GIS Jobs Clearinghouse

Of course, on top of all of this, we managed to promote our new GIS course (GEO 106 - Geographic Information Science, which I now think will fill quickly) and we gave away a bunch of free stuff and door prizes.

UWFox's web department sent a couple of photographers to shoot the event. Last night, they posted this little video on the UWFox web portals to show what happened at the events.

All in all, though exhausting, this was a good day and a good event. It's a lot of fun to get students engaged and excited about geography!

Earlier entries in this series:

GIS Day 2011 at UWFox: Publicity

Andrew Shears — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 03:58:23 +0000

So, as I've already written, we've been working on putting together a GIS Day at UWFox for the past couple of months. We've encountered certain challenges, which we've tried to stem by using a variety of strategies. Check out my entry on our preparation of this event for more on how we've designed our event for 2011.

I did want to make a special entry, though, to mention some of the publicity efforts that we've been working on to get the word out about GIS Day. One of the biggest challenges in the past for the Fox Valley GIS User Group has been capturing an interested audience. With my arrival at UWFox this year, we've managed to expand our methods of publicity for the event substantially. Of course, with the event still a day away, we don't know (yet) if our labors will be fruitful.

Publicity within UWFox

Our primary audience for this event was students, and our secondary audience was faculty. To do this, we combined some high-tech methods with some decidedly low-tech ones. All of this stuff was free, or mostly free.

A good month before the event, I sent out an email and an Outlook invite to the entirety of the teaching staff at UWFox. I explained in a fair amount of detail what GIS is, and how it could help many disciplines. That was free, and effective, because I got immediate response from over a dozen attendees. I chose a month early to allow interested instructors the chance to build GIS Day into their schedules if they so chose.

Then, beginning November 1, I had the IT department at UWFox start running this slide on the hallway Virtual Bulletin Board System (VBBS):

There are approximately ten flatscreen VBBS monitors around the campus containing a variety of announcements. While opinions amongst the staff are divided about how effective these messages are, I figure posting one to advertise our event couldn't hurt. I tried to capture the essence of our event, which is that GIS can be used in many different disciplines and fields.

In case those screens are mostly ignored (as some staff believe), I followed up the screen with some old-fashioned flyering. I combined the editable packet of flyers that were produced for GIS Day 2009 (which one of the FVGISUG members luckily had... Esri didn't provide much new stuff for this year) with a simple, bolder and clearer flyer to ensure direction to the event.

This is what I came up with:

...and I posted one of these on EVERY SINGLE BULLETIN BOARD on campus, at least the ones that weren't reserved for other things. I know now that there are 36 such cork boards. Good to know! I have a feeling I'll be needing that information again sometime.

Yesterday, I sent the entirety of the teaching staff a follow-up e-mail, reminding them that GIS Day was upon us, and listing a set of topics that the FVGISUG was covering in their presentations. As I said in the entry about preparing the event, the topics we chose were cultivated from the course schedule, hoping that there could be significant overlap to encourage attendance. A little later that afternoon, I announced it to the campus-wide collegium as well. If anyone knows that this thing is happening, it's the faculty and IAS at UWFox.

Of course, I can't force all of the students to come... but I can force my students to come! So, I did! My GEO 123 class, which is Weather & Climate, is required to attend GIS Day during when their class would meet from 9-10 am. They have to complete the worksheet I created for the event to get credit for attending, equivalent to one lab. My other class, Cultural Geography (GEO 101) is a night class. While I couldn't require a night class to attend a daytime event, I did offer them extra credit, for which they need to complete the same worksheet. Of course, I offered the worksheet to the remainder of the faculty in case they wanted to offer credit for the event as well.

Publicity to the Larger Fox Valley Community

We're fortunate at UWFox to have an active Director of University Relations and an awesome and responsive web staff. Within a day of getting in contact with these folks on Tuesday, November 8, we had a GIS Day Press Release put out to the local press outlets and media partners and had a big feature on the main page of the UWFox website:

Yep, that's my ugly mug under "What's New@UWFox" for the whole world to see. The big GIS Day Image, and the What's New story both link directly to the aforementioned GIS Day Press Release.

The event also quickly and repeatedly appeared on the UWFox Facebook:

...and the UWFox Twitter Feed:

But! That's not all! Probably the thing I'm (perhaps oddly) proud most of is the appearance of GIS Day on the UWFox Marquee Sign. The campus is located next to Wisconsin State Route 441, which is one of the busiest roads in the Appleton-Menasha area. It's an interstate-quality highway with thousands of cars driving by per day, and UWFox has a large sign and marquee along this road. Well, thanks to the Director of University Relations, we got GIS Day up there, and GIS Day was the only thing up there.

It might be geeky that I'm this geeked about something that's... well, really geeky. So what? Here it is:

Personally, I think having it on the marquee is AWESOME.

So, quite frankly, I've promoted this thing just about as much as it can possibly be promoted. Now, with the event tomorrow, I'm nervous that no one will show up, and that all of that was for nothing.

Here's hoping!

GIS Day 2011 at UWFox: Preparation

Andrew Shears — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 08:52:38 +0000

I never knew I would coordinate and host a GIS Day event.

As you may know, this is my first year as a tenure-track faculty at UW-Fox Valley. UWFox is part of the UW-Colleges system, which is a set of 13 two-year liberal arts institutions geared toward preparing students for a four-year school in the UW System. The Colleges have a shared department of around 20 geographers and geologists. Two of them are at this campus, and I'm the only geographer. That means I'm basically a "stand-alone" geographer who's responsible for, well, everything geography on campus.

That brings us to this year's Geography Awareness Week. While I haven't had my feet under me long enough here to put together a week-long program, I was fortunate to be contacted early on about hosting a GIS Day event on November 16 by the Fox Valley GIS Users Group. The FVGISUG is the local GIS professional networking group for Northeast Wisconsin, and they've been putting on a GIS Day event for several years. Last year, they worked with my predecessor to mild success. This year, we're trying again, and we're doing everything we can to make it big. The FVGISUG has been an outstanding collaborator for this project.

What We've Got Planned

According to records, there hasn't been a GIS course taught here since Fall 2009, so being that UWFox is a two-year institution, there is very little institutional memory of such a course. In other words, we're starting from scratch with our current students. In order to help students engage with the event, we've tried really hard to make this as relevant, interesting and engaging as possible to the student population here. We took a four pronged approach to doing just that:

Open House format. Let's face it, students (and faculty/IAS for that matter) who have no idea what GIS is are not likely to come to a programmed seminar for four hours on a Wednesday morning. People are busy, and getting them to invest that kind of time is just not something that's very likely to happen. By putting together an open house that runs from 9:00 am until 2:00 pm, we maximize our curiosity audience while not requiring a "commitment" to a longer program.

Planning for projects and presentations that are related to courses currently instructed at UWFox. We dug through the entire schedule for the institution to find courses that members of the FVGISUG could create or adapt projects around. For instance, given the strong political science curriculum at this school, we made sure that posters were available showing the various implications of redistricting debates. For anthropologists, we've got several posters showing recent archaeological digs through the Fox Valley. For fitness and wellness students, we have several projects showing the planned implementation of recreational trails. We've connected posters and presentations to a variety of fields. We hope that by connecting it directly to relevant course materials, and by letting the respective faculty know that we're doing this, that we can increase inclusion of GIS Day into a wide number of course curricula.

Using a variety of presentation media to engage as broadly as possible. In the education industry, we know that we're more likely to get students engaged if there are a variety of learning methods presented. In our case, we're going to have several different ways of content delivery. A couple of the FVGISUG members will be presenting a traditional PowerPoint mini-lecture on certain projects, upon request. Others will be presenting with prepared posters, standing ready to field questions from interested students. Several from the FVGISUG have organized hands-on demonstrations of certain aspects of GIS. Some information will be presented through looping video demonstrations on classroom computers. We've even brought in a few of our personal iPads to allow students to interact directly with ArcGIS.com and other applications.

Providing a worksheet to help students digest and synthesize the information presented. Even if the students who show up have absolutely no interest in GIS, that's not a reason this shouldn't still be a learning experience. Students need the skills to comb through the tremendous amount of information we're presented. I've constructed a very basic, non-discipline-specific worksheet to help them through that process for GIS Day. For my students, it is a required activity. For everyone else, it's optional, and I've alerted the faculty that they can require the worksheet if they want to award credit or extra credit for attendance.

Our Goals for GIS Day 2011

We're realistic about our goals for GIS Day on a campus that hasn't had a GIS course in over two years. With that in mind, we do still have some goals that I'm hoping we achieve with this event:

Improve overall attendance over the 2010 GIS Day event. Last year, the UWFox GIS Day event hosted a total of 23 people. Through various efforts, we're hoping to top that number easily.

Increased awareness of GIS among students and faculty. That much should be easy, and really, it's the biggest goal of any GIS Day event.

Boosted enrollment in and demand for our GEO 106 course on GIS. Seeing GIS in action is the best way to get students "hooked.

So, all of the preparations are made, the publicity is done. We will see what happens tomorrow morning!

A Weather Station for UWFox – Grant Proposal

Andrew Shears — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 07:59:01 +0000

I recently submitted a campus improvement grant to the UW-Fox Valley Foundation for the purchase of a weather station. We'll see how it turns out...

Proposal for UWFox Weather Station

At UWFox, the campus has long owned a weather station, an important enhancement to the classroom experience for students in meteorology and physical geography courses, specifically MLG 101, GEO 123 and GEO 125. The unit, purchased in approximately 1980, is inoperative, beyond repair, and incredibly obsolete. I am proposing that we replace this old and broken equipment with a new weather station outfit. The new station will record temperature, precipitation, barometric pressure, sky cover, wind speed and direction, and relative humidity. It will publish all weather data 24/7 to the web for public consumption. The goal of this proposal is to provide a substantial improvement to the learning experience offered in MLG 101, GEO 123 and GEO 125 courses, and additionally provide many benefits to students, the community, and institution.

Summary of Benefits Provided by Proposed Equipment

Station will greatly enrich student experience for all who take MLG 101, GEO 123, GEO 125

Station provides tangible example of equipment

Students can learn, hands-on, about the observation equipment and sensors used in a professional weather station suite and can see equipment in action.
Students can learn through demonstration how to properly install equipment

Current weather observations and archived data available 24/7 through web

Instructors can create exercises based on data from campus location.
Students can access data at all times, encouraging curiosity and engagement.
Reliable data for classroom discussion of weather events while or after they occur.

Provides reliable recording of conditions for proper comparison with NWS-run stations in nearby cities

Students can observe, predict when events will impact UWFox, check prediction with accurate data.
Students can see microclimate and micrometeorological differences by comparing station to others in area (short distances causing significant differences in observations and records).

Will create substantial data set that will allow for the hands-on student learning.

Faculty will create class projects based on weather observations at station.
Station data can serve as springboard for potential student independent research activities.
Station would provide accurate observations for entire UWFox community on hallway digital bulletin boards.

Summary of Benefits Provided by Proposed Equipment

Current weather observations and archived data available 24/7 through web.

Weather data more accurate and reliable than all non-NWS stations in Fox Cities.

Data and observations available to media regarding weather events.

All Menasha, Neenah users of WxUnderground, WeatherBug see UW-Fox Valley station, advertising campus.

Accuracy, dependability of station strengthens academic stature of institution to surrounding community.

Current weather conditions shown from weather station on UWFox website
Station’s website will feature UWFox links and logos, connected to campus.

Potential for media partners to mention station when reporting current weather from various cities in region.

Station suggests to area media outlets they can turn to UWFox for expert analysis of weather events.

Promotes campus to area students interested in weather and climate to consider UWFox.

Budgetary Concerns and Proposed Equipment Expenditures

The proposal for a UWFox Weather Station falls to an odd place, in terms of budget and bureaucracy. While it is intended that the weather station equipment will become a permanent fixture of the campus, it is not considered a permanent part of the campus physical plant and is therefore not considered the responsibility of the Winnebago-Outagamie County partnership for providing campus infrastructure. At the same time, because it is a permanent installation and a relatively large expense, the initial purchase is beyond the scope and means of the campus geography department’s budget. Given that department budgets are expected to further contract in 2012-13, it is unlikely that such a proposal would be funded in addition to normal items purchased for classroom supplies. Therefore, it seems that the UW-Fox Valley Foundation is the appropriate partner to approach for this kind of funding.

The equipment proposed for purchase is manufactured by Davis Scientific Instruments, and is considered the industry standard for automated weather stations. According to professional contacts in the industry, Davis instruments have a reputation for long life span, with many users still employing Davis equipment with over 30 years in service without significant repairs necessary nor problems encountered. This long life span is dependent, of course, on proper maintenance. Should the proposal be approved, then annual maintenance for the station – which should amount to not more than $100 annually – will be included in the geography department’s annual campus budget request.

Find on the next page a detailed budget and rationale for the equipment purchases proposed.

Item	Rationale	Cost
Davis Wireless Vantage Pro2 with 24-Hour Fan Aspirated Radiation Shield (link)	·Davis products are the industry standard in weather station equipment. Their products are used by many similar institutions.	$795.00
	·The Vantage Pro2 model records temperature, humidity, wind speed and direction, precipitation type, precipitation amount – all of the most commonly used data for topics covered in GEO 123, GEO 125, MLG 101.
Davis WeatherLink Software for Windows, USB (link)	· Enables data logging for detailed 24/7 records on PC.	$165.00
	· Connects weather station to internet, allows reporting of current condition on station website, 24/7.
	· Links weather station to Citizen Weather Observer Program, the GLOBE program and WeatherBug.
	· Allows student and public access to database of saved records from entire weather station history.
Davis Rain Collector Heater (link)	· Heater to be attached to rain collection unit to thaw frozen precipitation.	$195.00
	· Necessary in colder climates (like Wisconsin) during winter months to ensure that frozen precipitation is properly measured as a liquid equivalent.

Shipping	· We have to get it to campus somehow!	$55.00

	TOTAL	$1,210.00

Submission of Proposal

This proposal is submitted to the UW-Fox Valley Foundation as an application for a Campus Enhancement Fund grant. It is hoped that the committee and board will consider this proposal for the January 11, 2012 meeting, with possibility of funding the proposal in time to purchase and implement equipment for the Spring 2012 semester.

Please do not hesitate to contact the submitter of this proposal at any time for clarification, with questions or concerns, or for further detail regarding the information contained herein.

Respectfully submitted,
Andrew Shears
Assistant Professor of Geography
University of Wisconsin – Fox Valley
andrew.shears@uwc.edu
(920) 832-2851

Andrew Shears

From Absaroka to Yazoo: The 125 United States That Could’ve Been

UWFox’s Geography Offerings for 2012-13

Promoting UWFox Geography, Fall 2011: An Active Geo-Adventurers Club

Earlier posts in this series:

Promoting UWFox Geography, Fall 2011: Marketing Spring Courses

Other posts in this series:

Promoting UWFox Geography, Fall 2011: Growing interest in the discipline and, hence, our little department

Other posts in this series:

Promoting UWFox Geography, Fall 2011

GIS Day 2011 at UWFox: Success!

GIS Day 2011 at UWFox: Publicity

GIS Day 2011 at UWFox: Preparation

A Weather Station for UWFox – Grant Proposal

Proposal for UWFox Weather Station

Summary of Benefits Provided by Proposed Equipment

Summary of Benefits Provided by Proposed Equipment

Budgetary Concerns and Proposed Equipment Expenditures

Submission of Proposal