Members from Maptime Morgantown and California University of Pennsylvania’s YouthMappers got together for a mapathon at WVU’s Campus on September 23. This experience helped introduce the YouthMappers initiative to the students from Cal U and also helped to visualize how the data is used by USAID. Dr. McCusker and Dr. Conley helped to facilitate a discussion on how our interests in mapping can be transformed into individual projects with USAID or a larger scale projects. After the discussion, there was a mapathon to help with the ongoing project in Kenya. Cal U has traditionally focused on “real-world” applications in GIS throughout Southwestern Pennsylvania, but this has helped to broaden the vision of how GIS can be applied to help those in need throughout the world.
Later, Cal U held their own mapathon where students came and went throughout the geography labs to do their part in the Malaria Prevention Project for Kenya, on October 5th. It’s exciting to see the transition that Cal is making from being a regional presence to a global presence. This will not only benefit USAID in their mission to help foreign countries and populations, but will also benefit the students by changing their mindset from a citizen of America, to a citizen of the world.
Drs. McCusker and Conley lead a discussion about the application of crowd-sourced mapping.
CalU students get ready for a day full of mapping at WVU!
My name is Kyle Snyder and I am currently a senior at the California University of Pennsylvania, pursuing degrees in Geography (GIS/Emergency Management) and Jurisprudence (Concentration in Land Management) with minors in Computer Science and Criminal Justice. I serve as the secretary for the GIS Club at Cal U which hosts the YouthMappers Chapter.