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Instructional Development Award RecipientsSeveral undergraduate instructors who attended the 2004, 2005, 2006, or 2007 SPACE workshops were awarded funds to continue their efforts in integrating spatial analysis into their course curriculums. These pages showcase their achievements. See the full recipient list. Allan Joseph MedwickAffiliation: Office of Institutional Research and Department of Computer Science, Kean University Notable Achievements in His Own Words
Since attending the SPACE workshop, I have tried to influence the implementation of spatial approaches in the undergraduate curriculum at Kean University as well as incorporate spatial approaches into my classes. My first project was a 6-hour workshop, “Spatial Analysis for Institutional Research,” that I presented at the North East Association for Institutional Research (NEAIR) on November 4, 2007. Even though this workshop was aimed at an administrative audience, I used it as an opportunity to highlight ways that participants could partner with faculty members teaching GIS at their campuses. For example, an Institutional Research Office could provide de-identified data that could form the basis of a student or class project. In return, faculty members and students could help institutional researchers unfamiliar with GIS to analyze the data. The second project was helping Dr. Feng Qi of the Department of Geology and Meteorology with her presentation for GIS Day on November 15, 2007, which focused on GIS in the humanities and social sciences. Before the lecture, Dr. Qi and I discussed what I had learned at the SPACE workshop and my experiences at NEAIR; during the lecture, I assisted participants with the exercises when they had difficulty. Finally, I tried to introduce students to GIS and spatial analysis in the course I taught in fall 2007, Technology and Information Systems in Modern Society. In class, we discussed the business and government uses of spatial information. We also examined the growing support for spatial information in modern information systems (e.g., SQL Server 2008’s new spatial data types). I hope to expand this in future semesters. In general, I have tried to integrate the assessment techniques discussed at the SPACE workshop (e.g., Angelo and Cross) into my classes. Course MaterialsSpatial Analysis Workbook This was my first experience putting together a workbook for a GIS course. I hope to improve this workbook for future sessions of the workshop. I recently purchased a copy of TechSmith’s Camtasia Studio 5 and SnagIt 8.2 to make it easier to create training videos and workbooks. Future ParticipationI will use the expense allocation to attend the Foundations of Spatial Regression workshop taught by Dr. Luc Anselin at the University of Illinois. During my SPACE workshop, we only touched a little bit on spatial analytic methods during Dr. Sweeney’s lecture on housing values in Santa Barbara. I believe that the GeoDa workshop would greatly enhance my understanding of spatial autocorrelation, spatial weights, and Geographically Weighted Regression. I will then be better able to integrate these techniques into my other course, Research & Technology, which is an undergraduate research methods course. Back to “Instructional Development Award Recipients”
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The SPACE workshop helped me in many ways. First, it gave me a number of ideas about how to integrate spatial analysis into my courses. It also introduced me to new classroom assessment techniques that I will try to integrate into all of my classes. Second, it gave me credibility when discussing my ideas about the need for improving spatial awareness among undergraduates with other faculty and administrators at Kean. 
