LOCAL MODEL APPLICATION

Pilot location - Denver Metro Area
(to learn more, please contact Mary Ann Stewart)

Description

We are working with academic, industry, and workplace experts and communications specialists to communicate the opportunities, skills required, and programs that will help motivate workers to enter the geospatial field. We will work with DoL to develop metrics useful for measuring progress of the pilot.

Our focus for the Denver pilot will be on A: community colleges, B: professional/vocational retraining, C: apprenticeship/vocational technology students; D: grades 10-12. Community colleges are a special focus of DOL-ETA grants and an excellent model for quick response to change in technology needs.

The broad goal of this effort is to create a geospatial continuum for lifelong learning, ranging from high school, to two year college, to four year college, to continuing education programs. One area where students need help is with transitions and avoidance of dead-end career tracks. Due to a current lack of standards, it may be difficult for a student with two-year college credits to transfer these to a four-year geospatial program. By exploring these issues for the Denver pilot area, we hope to create solutions that are extendable to other geographic areas and educational arenas.

We intend to facilitate the use of GIWIS as a communication tool to put potential employers in contact with students. A great deal of geospatial hiring is from small companies and no counselor can know all of the prospective employers in a large metro area such as Denver. Having a dynamic tool that enhances networking would be a great help to the hands-on work done by counselors as they work to match students with suitable career paths.

Several meetings have been held with Denver workforce boards through the Denver Office of Economic Development. An educator meeting was held February 16 at GITA offices in Aurora. In attendance were Connie Knapp and Tom Holcomb from CMaP, Rosanne Poltrone from Arapahoe Community College, Steve Hick from University of Denver, Amanda Gierow of University of Colorado at Denver, Robb Menzies of Denver Public Schools, plus GITA project staff and phone participation by Gino Guzzardo and Chris Hines of KidZ Online. We also visited Deb Thomas at the University of Colorado at Denver as well as visiting the Front Range Community College GIS open house conducted by Pat Boda. Through this event we collected information on metro area vocational tech schools, but have not yet found any with geospatial or related training.

High School Projects

• Lead educator: Robb Menzies, GIS Specialist, Denver Public Schools, Teacher Development and Outreach Project to develop basic geospatial skills for teachers. Robb is developing teaching units (curriculum development) for biology, social studies and business areas, including data, background materials, lesson plans, student materials. These units will be freely available nationally. He is also developing a half-day teacher professional development class, to include multimedia curriculum, filming best practices training and production of a one-hour video. This class will be deployed through the Denver Public Schools on-line high school and will be freely available for national use. The course will be used to qualify teachers to use GIS in the classroom.
• Community Mapping Program (CMaP) – providing outreach through GITA chapters with extensive participation underway with Kansas City chapter.
• KidZ Online/GeoSpatial21 – exchange of information. GITA provided review of their curriculum material. GITA to provide opportunities for filming industry leaders at GITA Conference in April. We had discussions of creation of plug and play educational series for high schools and the use of GIWIS to help prevent redundancy of efforts.

• Lead educator: Rosann Poltrone, Department Coordinator, Geography/Geology/GIS, Arapahoe Community College, Littleton, CO – We are providing assistance with marketing geospatial classes, working with workforce boards and potential employers to determine if classes are meeting training needs, working toward standardized curriculum to integrate geospatial into standard two-year curriculums (rather than serving only as an elective) and to investigate the perception of nontransferrability between community colleges and four-year universities. Rosann’s greatest educational need is to have her own lab rather than sharing it with the CAD lab and being forced out to undesirable times for access.
• Front Range Community College – provides an example of developing industry involvement through its advisory board, transferability of credits to four-year organizations, flexibility of program to adjust to industry needs, development of certificate program.

• Denver University will provide collaboration on the effective use of GIWIS as a networking tool for job seekers and employers. Steve Hick, DU’s geospatial academic director, notes that the well-known job boards are not all that industry specific and that small businesses don’t use them. However, geospatial in Colorado tends to be a mom and pop industry. Having a local electronic means of communication would make it possible for employers to use the tool without fear of being overwhelmed. We could also use the tool to ask industry to predict their needs in five years and to better articulate their needs with a realistic estimate of educational level and appropriate compensation. The tool could be used by students to develop a strategic plan for their future.
• Deb Thomas, Assistant Professor of Geography & Environmental Sciences at University of Colorado at Denver, has ideas for internships, both for college students going to industry and for college students mentoring high school teachers and students. She is interested in a partnership with industry to develop a remote sensing curriculum. She would also be interested in developing freshman/sophomore sociology GIS modules oriented to guaranteed transfer courses.

• Continue to develop a relationship with Denver WIB, NASWA and NAWB. Consider using the WIB model “The Road to Sector Success” to create a geospatial sector pamphlet. Work with Colorado WIBs to help us develop strategy for the geospatial sector and with outreach communication. Work with area workforce boards to determine large employers in Denver area. The primary concern of WIBs is that there be a job at the end of the rainbow and that we not sell workers on training for a job that won’t be there.
• The Denver workforce board through the Office of Economic Development provided guidance in areas of particular interest to them in the Denver area, including growth in the energy sector, ideas for bringing training to workers in the workplace, ideas for providing educational funding for displaced workers, and issues of the resistance to changing careers for displaced workers. We discussed the potential geospatial training needs of emergency response/Homeland Security workers such as firefighters. The Denver workforce board also indicated additional educational institutions with training centers of interest, including Community College of Denver and Community College of Aurora.

• We have attempted various means of collecting industry projections of geospatial job growth. We are currently conducting a telephone survey of Denver employers regarding staffing practices and future needs, with emphasis on two-year graduates, as well as an email survey of Federal agency geospatial contacts in the Denver area. In the course of the interviews, industry representatives have indicated interest in internship programs and in the development of a remote sensing curriculum. We are also investigating the need for a surveying technician training program and plan to distribute an employer survey related to this potential need.
• The Denver Office of Economic Development has contributed suggestions for targeted industries, including aerospace, energy, and IT. We plan to involve industry representatives in the planning and rollout of the GIWIS networking tool.