In late 1996 the co-chairs of the OVPR Spatial Information and GIS Coordinating Committee interviewed a graduate student who was thinking of transferring from Michigan because we don't have adequate support for his work or faculty who can teach and inspire him. What he needed was an infrastructure for Geographic Information Systems, and faculty and staff expertise is limited at Michigan.
At about the same time, there was reportedly a conversation in a Federal funding agency that went: "These people at Michigan don't know what they are doing [on GIS]. They should get help from MSU."
Several of us have noted with some bemusement that EMU is offering courses on GIS software. Some of us have taken those courses.
These are not ordinarily the tales that are told about Michigan.
The Office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) and its Spatial Information and GIS Coordinating Committee are currently evaluating the campus's needs for a stronger capacity for faculty, staff, and students to use spatial or geographic information in their research and teaching. We would greatly appreciate your taking a few minutes to fill out our questionnaire. It will take you a longer time to read this material than to complete our questionnaire.
The 14 questions were developed by the Spatial Information and GIS Coordinating Committee, a committee established by OVPR. The original charge to this group was to make recommendations intended to enable University of Michigan faculty and students to learn and make use of GIS technologies in their research, with emphasis upon the University's need for a sound GIS infrastructure. In October, 1996, the Vice President for Research, together with the Provost and the Vice Provost for Information Technology, added a charge: consider the need for new faculty research leadership in GIS.
Archaeological studies of urban sites Diffusion of language, technology, ideas, ... Effects of socioeconomic context on voting behavior Environmental monitoring and remediation Logistics - siting, just-in-time inventory control Marketing studies Medical imaging (topography of the human body) Migratory patterns, population studies Modeling of atmosphere/surface interactions Plant layout and operational flow analysis Siting of towers for wireless communications Surface runoff analyses Traffic flow and control
"Fire and Ice: Modeling the Future of Climate and Life"
"Place Based Imagination: Globalism and the Politics of Place"
"The Application of GIS in Assessing China's Agricultural Productivity
Potential"
"Understanding the role of distance in international trade"
In each of these examples, place, location, or geography play more than an incidental role; in some, spatial information is key to the analysis. GIS (Geographic Information Systems) is simply a name of a kind of tool that has been developed for capturing, storing, retrieving, and analyzing spatial information. One such GIS is ArcView, which is in some use already at the University.
At the end of its work, the Committee will make recommendations about what, if anything, the central administration and the schools, colleges, and institutes should do to strengthen the capacity of Michigan people to use spatial and geographic information. These recommendations may pertain to faculty hires, provision of hardware and software, technical staffing, campus training, and outreach efforts.
The survey is being sent to faculty and primary research scientists (PRS) (via a short-lived email group that cannot be used by anyone else); and research administrators (defined by membership in the email group "drda-net").
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