Professional Development in Remote Sensing for Community College Instructors

Abstract. The ingredients for the highly successful, ongoing educator professional development program, "Integrated Geospatial Education and Technology Training–Remote Sensing (iGETT-RS)" came into place in 2006 when representatives of public and private organizations convened a two-day workshop at the National Science Foundation (NSF) to explore issues around integrating remote sensing with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) instruction at two-year (community and Tribal) colleges. The results of that 2006 workshop informed the shape of a grant proposal, and two phases of iGETT-RS were funded by NSF's Advanced Technological Education Program (NSF DUE #0703185, 2007–2011, and NSF DUE #1205069, 2012–2015). 76 GIS instructors from all over the country have been served. Each of them has spent 18 months on the project, participating in monthly webinars and two Summer Institutes, and creating their own integrated geospatial exercises for the classroom. The project will be completed in June 2015. As the external evaluator for iGETT expressed it, the impact on participating instructors "can only be described as transformative." This paper describes how iGETT came about, how it was designed and implemented, how it affected participants and their programs, and what has been learned by the project staff about delivering professional development in geospatial technologies for workforce preparedness.