The National Geospatial Technology Center (NGT Center) is a partnership of seven community colleges, a community and technical college system, and a four-year university in collaboration with industry and state and local governments representing all regions of the country. In order to better prepare America's 21st century workforce, the vision of the NGT Center is to provide leadership to community and technical colleges in all aspects of emerging geospatial technology. To help increase the number, diversity, and quality of geospatial technology professionals, the mission of the NGT Center is to improve geospatial technology education at the community and technical college level.
Intellectual Merit: The NGT Center has the potential to transform the preparation and continuing education of geospatial technicians to meet national workforce demand through its goals to: (1) create a national clearinghouse of exemplary geospatial curriculum materials, resources, and national geodatabase web services; (2) provide a unified voice for two-year colleges and increase their capacity to educate geospatial technicians through new partnerships and collaborations; (3) increase the quantity, quality and diversity of geospatial technicians to meet U.S. workforce needs; (4) increase the number of community and technical college geospatial faculty and secondary school teachers participating in geospatial professional development; and (5) create a self-sustaining center for geospatial technology.
Broader Impacts: The institutional partners of NGT serve a diverse student population and include two Hispanic Serving Colleges and two in the Southeast with significant African American enrollment. These partners continue to expand their networks for Hispanic and African American students throughout their service regions and beyond. Individuals with disabilities, especially disabled veterans, provide an untapped resource for geospatial technology workers. The NGT Center is working with various disability agencies to better meet the needs of this population, including the integration of assistive technology devices. The NGT Center partners are actively presenting at a variety of events to increase awareness of resources available to educators, maintain ties to industry workforce instruction needs, and become a unifying voice for two-year programs. The team is dedicated to reaching not only the traditional outlets, but also to new and nontraditional groups such as the League for Innovation, the Association for Career and Technology Education, the National Association of Counties, the Geological Society of America, the American Geological Union, the National Center for American Indian Enterprise Development, the National Institute for Women in Trades, Technology and Science, and the United States Department of Veterans Affairs.
The National Geospatial Technology Center of Excellence (GeoTech Center), led by Dr. Phillip Davis, Director and Principle Investigator (PI), was hosted by Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas from September 2008—September 2013. During its first five years the Center was responsible for two transformational products which have impacted college and university academic GIS programs nationwide. The first achievement was the completion and publication of the Department of Labor Geospatial Technology Competency Model (GTCM) in June 2010. The GTCM is a framework of the Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities (KSAs) required for geospatial technology workers at all levels of expertise and experience, as defined by industry experts. Using the GTCM, geospatial educators and curriculum designers have been able to realign their courses and degree programs to better match the needs of the US Geospatial Technology Industry. Employing GTCM curriculum alignment tools developed by the GeoTech Center, educators are able to perform a "gap-analysis" of their GIS course content in order to insure they include the most pertinent items of KSAs identified by the GTCM. For example, the GTCM curriculum assessment spreadsheet allows educators to record, item by item, a score for each of 330 KSAs identified in the GTCM as most critical for geospatial technician to possess. Using this measurement tool, educators can compare the KSAs identified in the GTCM against those taught in their own geospatial courses. Once completed, the educator can rapidly identify items they may not be covering, or covering at an insufficient level. Using this curriculum map, they are able to discover gaps in their coverage of relevant material and make improvements in these items. The resulting improvement will be a college curriculum that better meets the needs of both employers and graduates. The second major achievement of the Center was the development and publication of the GTCM-aligned Model Courses. The curriculum consist of a series of ten recommended courses suggested for graduates of geospatial technology programs in order to adequately prepare them for the broadest possible range of occupations in the industry. These Model Courses were developed using a collaborative process that engage 40 experienced geospatial educators from both universities and colleges nationwide through a series of regional workshops held across the US in 2011 and 2012. The Model Courses consist of curriculum, including model syllabi, scoring rubrics, and course scope and sequence documents. Using these documents, geospatial educators have realigned their existing courses and created entirely new ones. Numerous college educators around the country report creating entirely new degree programs to meet the needs of their local industry based upon these model courses. In 2013, a new Department of Labor project—the National Information, Security & Geospatial Technology Consortium (NISGTC) created a series of complete geospatial model courses based upon the Model Courses. These complete course packages, including lecture materials and interactive laboratories, are being deployed among the consortium’s seven colleges in five states, as well as being adopted in whole or part by dozens of colleges nationwide to created entirely new geospatial programs, or improve existing ones. The impact of the GeoTech Center, through the GTCM and Model Courses, will continue to have a profound impact on future geospatial educators and graduates for a number of years into the 21st century.
