News Releases
News from Lane Community College
May 21, 2009
AGENCY SUPPORT FOR GIS PROGRAM NEARS $1.5 MILLION
Lane County high school teachers invited to participate
Eugene, Ore. - Two Lane Community College instructors have received a $692,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to expand the use of geographic information systems (GIS) in secondary and post-secondary classrooms over the next 2 1/2 years. The new grant follows up a 2006 NSF grant of $782,000 for similar work, increasing the national agency’s support of GIS work at LCC to nearly $1.5 million. NSF grants are among the most competitive and highly sought-after grants in research and education.
Lynn Songer, project principal investigator, and Eric Sproles, project co-principal investigator, received the new NSF Advanced Technological Education grant to continue their work in developing GIS curriculum. The new grant will implement the GEOSTAC (geospatial teaching across the curriculum) project to help high school teachers infuse web-based GIS lessons in their classes across a wide variety of subjects.
The new award will support teacher-training workshops and will bring students to Lane's campus for tours and activities in the GIS lab. Teachers will receive a stipend of $2,000, earn continuing professional development units, and be eligible for reduced-fee graduate credits from Portland State University.
MAPS-GIS, the predecessor project to GEOSTAC, led to the development of a four-course GIS sequence for Lane students and a less than 1-year pathway certificate in GIS. In addition, the MAPS-GIS team developed 26 web-based GIS modules, which were taught across the curriculum at Lane and at other institutions across the nation.
"GIS holds great potential to help teachers teach and to excite students to learn how to examine complex issues and solve problems related to place," Songer said. "We were thrilled to get the first grant because the NSF review process is quite rigorous and our application was in competition with many strong proposals from across the country."
Songer credits her colleagues and community partners for making Lane's program a success including Jane Benjamin, Sarah Ulerick, and Linda Loft, LCC; Bob Curtis, Lane Education Service District; Susan Hardwick, Adam Lake, Cathleen Leue, University of Oregon; Sarah Witham Bednarz, Texas A&M University; and Mike Rudibaugh, National Science Foundation and Lake Land College, Mattoon, IL.
Lane is an equal opportunity/affirmative action institution.
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Media contacts:
Joan Aschim, public information officer, aschimj@lanecc.edu (541) 463-5591
Lynn Songer, GIS and geography instructor, songerl@lanecc.edu or (541) 463-5493
