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MEETING THE GEOSPATIAL WORKFORCE NEED

Question 12: Identify up to three (3) academic disciplines which will be most important for preparing the geospatial workforce during the next 10 years.

FIELD	FREQ	%
Computer Science	51	28.33
Geography	45	25.00
Engineering	25	13.89
Environmental Science	20	11.11
Planning	17	9.44
Photogrammetry	10	5.56
Urban Studies	10	5.56
Agriculture	1	0.56
Physics	1	0.56

Question 13: The following educational/training mechanisms have been identified as successful strategies for long-term sustainability of the geospatial technology workforce. Please identify the three (3) most important training/educational programs to the success of your organization.

TYPE	FREQ	%
Four-year university (bachelor degree)	51	25.25
On-the-job training	39	19.31
Vendor-specific (on-site/off-site) training	28	13.86
Master's degree	25	12.38
Apprenticeship	24	11.88
Professional certification	16	7.92
Two-year college (associate degree)	9	4.46
On-line short-term courses	7	3.47
Doctoral degree	3	1.49

Question 14: Please list any additional educational/training mechanisms you feel are important in preparing individuals to enter the geospatial technology industry workforce and the success of your organization.

These are the responses (direct quotes, as is):

· *Professional* degrees, e.g. postbaccalaureate and practice-oriented masters degrees. The very best of these will be available wholly or partly online, some in collaboration with vendors.

· A four-year university bachelor's degree would not necessarily train a person fully in geospatial competencies but in the field in which the company engages. Hopefully a prospective employee would come into the company with basic GIS skills and understanding and the on-the-job training or apprenticeship would complete the process of full preparation of employees.

· Academic certificate programs focused on specific aspects of GIS&T that would require on the order of 18-21 credit hours. In question 12 you are missing an increasingly important discipline

· Applied research, applied apprenticeship, data collection and analysis training

· Bring this effort to the Primary School level to develop interest and working knology of why the Geography they've just learned is important and will play a role in the rest of their life. How many thousands of miles are traveled each day by people that are lost? Costing time, energy, missed operatunities, injury and worse."

· Capstone projects and internships working with industry

· Computer science and IT knowledge.

· Continued education in emerging GIScience fields is crucial. As new technologies are developed, and new directions in using geospatial technologies become available, we need to develop continuing education for all levels of expertise in GIScience.

· Continuing education

· Co-op education, internship programs and similiar activities and young folks need to see how a deep understanding of spatial technologies can make a good career path."

· Credit and Non-credit short courses are valuable for workforce training. On-line courses are helpful, but nothing beats the hands-on courses for the software side of geospatial technologies (GIS, Remote Sensing). On-the-job training is also a valuable way to learn and gain education."

· Experience

· Graduate Certificate needs to be included as part of this.

· graduate school research and thesis (by the way, your survey seems to have a bug and forces users to fill out this optional field, thinking that it is ""FIRST NAME"")

· I am a firm believer in hands on training in the environment that you will be applying your training and education.

· I approach geospatial technology from the perspective of enabling domain professionals to use geospatial technologies to improve their decision making as opposed to educating geospatial professionals. From that perspective, geospatial courses within professional degrees are important."

· I assume Internship and Appreticeship are the same?

· I think the list pretty much covers it

· Internship program has been very successful for us.

· Internships

· Internships (either paid or unpaid) are win-win situations. The intern gets ont-the-job real world experience and the hiring organization get low cost and (hopefully) high quality labor.

· Management Seminars/Workshops for mid-career professionals

· Minor Degree

· OJT and hands on experience in a apprenticeship program is extremely helpful

· On-the-job training encompasses others in the above list - ie, vendor specific training, short term courses.

· Our experience shows that current GIS degrees are overabundant in industry and do not offer our company the necessary skills we seek in the areas of computer sciences, systems analysis and critical problem solving. Our approach is to hire computer scientists and highly competent engineers and train them in the necessary elements of geospatial technologies.

· Practical applications of geospatial skills, knowledge & training; role of geospatial technology in the larger information technology perspective, especially as related to cross-platform and multi-platform integration and interoperational issues."

· Practical work projects as the basis for masters theses.

· Project Management, Systems Development Methodology

· See my note above about training professionals in proper scientific method - problem indentification and solving. This needs to be independent of tools. Too much training/education today is tool specific. Also, there should be greater knowledge of the implications and importance of using international standards (content, interface, encoding) etc.

· Short-term instructor-led training

· Since we are an ESRI / Microsoft enterprise GIS development shop, ideally we'd like to get staff who have Microsoft certifications (Solution Developer being the best), and then have some option to get them a similar ESRI certification. At this time, there is no similar ESRI certification, and by and large the ESRI developer training is too low end to be of much use. Really, to build substantial systems, we need smart, quick learners who have strong software development skills, and an interest in spatial problems.

· Students are abomidably prepared relative to quantitative understanding & skills. This needs to improve drastically in order for user organizations and to successfully benefit from the full potential of geospatial technology

· The most critical is the self motivation to read and keep abreast of the fast changing industry. The technical skills you learn in college or OTJ training are obsolete before you learn them, and it is critical to keep up.

· This is not a comment regarding question 13 but one to direct you to another resource. URISA has a professional certification program for GISP, GIS Professional. I recommend cross-referencing your survey against their requirements.