91´«Ã½

The career path was not necessarily well-lit when I graduated from the geography department at CU-Boulder in the mid-1990s. Yet in retrospect, it’s curious to notice that the journey seems remarkably coherent. As a geographer who maintained an interest in all the things, I leaned towards the sub-disciplines that maintained that wide breadth—cartography/GIS and geography education. My thesis focused on the effectiveness of interactive maps in the classroom and was the first to include a floppy disk as part of the submission! While in the department, I worked for both the Colorado Geographic Alliance (COGA) and the cartography lab. Remarkably, my current position as Head of the Geospatial Centroid at Colorado State University (CSU) bridges those same areas—with a healthy dose of project and program management included.

Despite the semblance of a relatively straight line, the path was in no way laid out in advance—in fact, it needed a fair bit of blazing. An ongoing effort to improve geography education at that time justified establishing a new role of Program Manager for COGA and tangentially, a Program Manager for the CO Geography Education Fund (COGEF), an endowed fund from National Geographic to support geography education in the state. Both positions were new, and I filled both. While raising three daughters, I also taught geography at the community college. (Note to young professionals: It wasn’t easy, nor recommended!) After a much-needed sanity pause to keep the family intact, I was approached by a former CU colleague (Dave Theobald, Ph.D., 1995) to assist with some GIS work at CSU in Fort Collins (where we both live). That was 18 years ago.

In 2008, CSU did not have a GIS program per se, though many people on campus were using these technologies for research and teaching. A modest, grant-funded effort to establish a “geospatial data development center" morphed early on to become the Geospatial Centroid, a resource and service center that provides support for all things geospatial to the on- and off-campus community. Now well established within Morgan Library, the Centroid provides training, project support, internships, and a welcoming space for students and researchers alike.

Having been with the Centroid since its inception, I have been able to use my geography, cartography, GIS, education, and program/project management skills to establish and support this organization. I am grateful and, frankly, somewhat surprised that after 30 years my geography career path somehow has made sense.

Couldn’t have seen that coming, back when there were floppy disks…