Teaching Professor Todd Bacastow was recently accepted into the Emeritus Academy at Penn State. The Emeritus Academy was “founded to promote the ongoing engagement of Penn State emeriti faculty in both scholarly and creative activities. It seeks to promote scholarly community​ among emeritus faculty, provide connections to keep emeritus faculty connected to the University, enhance the reputation of the University, and to benefit society at large.”

Here is a note from Professor Bacastow about his goals while in the Academy:

“It's a sad yet undeniable reality that conflict often drives innovation. The Emeritus Academy facilitates my studies of the innovations in geospatial technologies resulting from the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Recognizing and conveying the learnings from this conflict play a vital role in the sustained evolution of Penn State's online educational offerings. The research serves as a compass, directing the programs toward recent innovations and helps to solidify Penn State's reputation as a pioneer in the geospatial field.”

MGIS student Yousre Odeh, through his work with the City of Wilmington, Delaware’s Public Works Department, was one of the recipients of the 2023 Esri Special Achievement in GIS award. The winning organizations for the award "set new precedents throughout the GIS community" (ESRI). Mr. Odeh is the project manager for Wilmington’s innovative efforts to improve the city's aging water distribution infrastructure by identifying water mains for replacement, sharing findings with stakeholders, and efficiently documenting the installation of new mains.

MGIS graduate Libbie Duskin received Penn State’s Esri Innovation Program 2023 Student of the Year Award. Our program is one of a small number of academic units around the world recognized as a participant in the Esri Innovation Program (EIP). The EIP seeks to promote GIS software and application development by providing students special access to Esri software and opportunities to be recognized for their accomplishments. 

For her MGIS Capstone research, Ms. Duskin explored the use of several geospatial tools to monitor movements of elephants in zoological facilities.

Recent previous EIP Student of the Year awardees are:

2021 - Sue Panton

2020 - Gene Trantham

Marcela Suàrez and Brandi Gaertner are among 15 female academics from across the United States chosen to attend the 2022 Training and Retaining Leaders in STEM-Geospatial Sciences (TRELIS) workshop. The four-day workshop focuses on building leadership capacity and skills to address career development, communication, conflict resolution and work-life integration. 

The research for this paper, SensePlace2: GeoTwitter analytics support for situational awareness, was led by Alan MacEachren, professor emeritus of geography and information science and technology, who retired in June 2022. Other co-authors include Anuj Jaiswal, Anthony Robinson, Scott Pezanowski, Alexander Savelyev, Prasenjit Mitra, Xiao Zhang and Justine Blanford.

Beth King, Associate Teaching Professor and Assistant Program Manager for Online Geospatial Education, received the 2021 Carolyn Merry Mentoring Award from the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) in June 2021. This award recognizes an individual who demonstrates exceptional mentoring abilities and practices. Ms. King advises students in the MGIS and MS in Spatial Data Science programs, working with them throughout their time in the program to help plan coursework and match them with advisors for their capstone research projects.

Karen Schuckman, Assistant Teaching Professor and lead faculty for the Graduate Certificate in Remote Sensing and Earth Observation, has been named Executive Director of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS). The executive director is the senior operating officer and reports directly to the society’s board of directors. Ms. Schuckman has been actively involved in ASPRS since 1990, has been elected previously to numerous positions, and received the ASPRS Outstanding Service Award in 2018.