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Spatial Career Guide

In a recent post I argued that Spatial is Indeed Special but that GIS software skills will soon be obsolete. Recent graduates trying to establish “GIS careers” (perhaps we should start calling them Geospatial Careers?) have begun complaining because the opportunities they were promised haven’t materialized. I recently tried to provide some guidance for those attempting to launch a GIS career. But, if you are a current undergraduate studying GIS within a geography department what should you do to prepare for one of these spatial careers? Should you continue taking ArcGIS classes or should you spend more time on other skills?

Spatial is Indeed Special…but GIS Software Skills will Soon be Obsolete

I’m fairly new to the blogosphere and Twitter and most of the other forms of social media so I hope you’ll forgive me for arriving late to the party and digging up relatively old posts. I read a recent post by James Fee on his Spatially Adjusted blog that referred back to a 2009 blog post arguing that “Spatial is not Special“. Sorry to be 2.5 years late to comment but if no one else has formed an opposition to this opinion, please allow me to be the first.

If James had titled his post “GIS is not Special”, I wouldn’t have felt compelled to debate, because GIS software is not special, but “spatial” is indeed special. Here’s why:

Top 20 Graduate Geography Programs in the U.S.

[highlight color=”options: yellow, black”]This post was written in February 2012. Since then I’ve posted 2013 Geography Program Rankings, 2014 GIS Graduate Program Rankings and, more recently, 2015 Top Graduate Programs for Spatial Careers . Please check out these newer rankings! [/highlight]

I love lists and, especially, ranked lists. Even though I never seriously considered going to medical school or engineering school I was always very interested to find out which programs were ranked at the top. I routinely read the US News & World Report annual rankings of top colleges and graduate programs and I’ve since followed the Wall Street Journal and Economist MBA rankings. When I became interested in pursuing a graduate degree in geography, I was disappointed to find that there were no publications that ranked graduate geography programs. So, I’ve decided to create my own rankings and post them here.

The only available basis for developing rankings of graduate geography programs (that I’m aware of – please comment if you can suggest another good source) comes from the U.S. National Research Council’s survey of doctoral programs. Although some have been critical of the methodology used to develop the rankings, this is as good as it gets for small disciplines like geography. [If you don’t like the rankings below, take my survey and let your opinion be counted!]

Unfortunately, because these rankings were produced by academic types who are masters of creating difficult-to-understand prose for publication in peer review journals, you almost need a PhD to interpret their rankings. So, I’ve tried to clarify these rankings by simply aggregating them together to form a single ranking. So, without further ado, here are my top 20 geography programs in the United States:

Geospatial Visualization in Business: Bringing John Snow into the Boardroom

John Snow was a physician in London in the 19th Century and he is famous for having used maps to identify the source of the Broad Street cholera outbreak in 1854. Dr. Snow’s work is often cited as the founding event in epidemiology. For me, it represents a key event in applied geography, demonstrating the power of maps and their ability to illuminate patterns in data.

643px-Snow-cholera-map-1 — Original map made by John Snow in 1854. Cholera cases are highlighted in black.

Here’s another map of the same data using modern cartography.

Just like the citizens of London who were trying to figure out what was causing the cholera outbreak, business analysts throughout the world are trying to diagnose pain points in their business.