Introducing GIS for Undergraduate Social Science Courses

August 1-6, 2005: San Francisco, CA

Travel and Accommodations
San Francisco State University is located close to San Francisco International Airport (SFO) and easily accessible by public transportation (the Bay Area Rapid Transit System - BART) from the airport.

Attendees are strongly encouraged to stay on campus while attending the workshop. We have reserved on-campus accommodations which are only a five minute walk from the facility where the SPACE workshop will be held. The rooms are reserved for seven nights from Sunday night July 31 through Saturday night August 6, but workshop participants may check out Saturday morning if they choose.

Participants can choose from among three on-campus housing options:

• Single occupancy apartments in the Towers at Centennial Square: $86.50 per day
• Double occupancy apartments in the Towers: $46.50 each per day
• Single occupancy residence hall room in Mary Park Hall: $50.50 per day

For further information on accommodations see Conference Services Lodging.

Those opting to stay off-campus can choose from a variety of hotels in San Francisco, many only 15 minutes from campus via inexpensive public transportation. Please see the MUNI schedule for time and place of pickup for transportation to the school. The workshops will be conducted in the SFSU College of Behavioral and Social Science teaching labs.

If you run into emergency problems prior to or during your arrival in the San Francisco area, you can reach at 415-338-1178.

Facilities
All workshop activities will take place in the Geographic Analysis Teaching Lab (GATL), the teaching facility for the SFSU Department of Geography and Human Environmental Studies. The GATL includes hardware and software for image processing and geospatial analysis, as well as a wide array of ancillary and supporting equipment.

Hardware
The foundation of the GATL is a 155Mb ATM network connecting 24 workstations and a Dell Poweredge Servers. The GATL facility also includes a wide array of input-output devices including image scanners, laser printers, large format color plotter, as well as an array of data storage devices. To facilitate instruction there is a computerized faculty lectern linked to a multi-resolution projection system.

Software
A large suite of applications software provides state-of-the-art capabilities for image processing, mapping, modeling, statistical analysis, and visualization The ArcGIS 9.x (ESRI, Inc.) suite of software provide the primary GIS analysis and modeling tools for the workshop.