It is hard to imagine that any department of a higher education institution could actually also be a business, but one doesn’t look much further than Washington College’s Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Program at Washington College to see one in real time.
The GIS program, established in 2003 by John Seidel, the head of WC’s Center for Environment and Society, not only trains students in the technology and application of GIS mapping, it also has fifteen full-time professionals housed in an industrial park a few miles from campus. The net results of this horsepower generates over $1.5 million in gross revenue this past year.
We caught up with Stewart Bruce, GIS Program Coordinator (academic code word for COO) to highlight one example of the power of GIS. In this case, he chose the Maryland Crime Mapping and Analysis Program. He also highlights what liberal arts students get out of a program like that in real life. Surprisingly, Stu starts with the year 1782 to provide his answer.
This video is four minutes in length
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