Aims Community College in Greeley, Colorado, has developed an interdisciplinary Geographic Information Systems (GIS) emphasis program which is part of an Associate of Arts (A.A.) degree. This program will be shared by diverse academic disciplines, departments and divisions. The purpose of this proposal referred to as Information Management in Applied Geoscience Education (I.M.A.G.E.) is to introduce students to spatial information management in traditional geoscience curricula and to serve as a model for other institutions of higher education. The I.M.A.G.E. program will provide funding for the establishment of a GIS lab and associated GPS and field instrumentation. LM.A.G.E. students will learn how to solve problems using spatial principles and techniques (computer cartography, GIS applications using ArcView software, GPS systems) so they may compete in today's and tomorrow's global society. Students will develop and integrate customized GIS data sets in conjunction with commercially available data sets into multi-layered presentations to understand the attributes of locations on the earth's surface. Research indicates the explosive growth of GIS applications in the Rocky Mountain Front Range corridor. Businesses and government agencies are looking at two- and four- year academic institutions to fill this gap between supply of and demand for GIS professionals. Currently, institutions of higher education in Colorado are not training sufficient numbers of GIS professionals. Subsequently, GIS users must go out of state to hire trained GIS employees. Aims' commitment to the I.M.A.G.E. program is demonstrated as follows: adequate release time of geoscience and computer faculty for curriculum development and course preparation, the hiring of a part-time technical support person in addition to the institutional computer services provided by Aims, facility renovations and remodeling plus an equipment match equal to NSF's contribution. Aims Community College requests funding from the DUE for Instrum entation and Laboratory Improvement (ILI) to implement the LM.A.G.E. program for the acquisition of computer hardware and software for a GIS lab and associated GPS instrumentation, as well as additional field equipment and laptop computers that will insure sophisticated and professional training for the next generation of applied geoscientists.
