GeoTech Center: Innovation in Geospatial Information Science and Technology Education

国家地理空间技术卓越中心（GeoTech Center）是一个为期两年的学院，大学，专业组织和行业的合作，专注于一套专业的信息技术，称为地理空间信息科学与技术（GIST）。该GeoTech中心拥抱机会，提供系统的教育变革在GIST，并协助成功的学习者的扩散，从而扩大与具有一套公认的行业定义的技能和能力的合格的劳动力的领域。GeoTech中心的目标是：1）通过在工业界、政府和学术界的专业人员之间建立联系，建立一个以GIST为重点的实践社区; 2）根据地理空间行业和不断扩大的辅助用户社区的当前需求，创建和传播相关的GIST课程和教学工具; 3）通过为教师提供创新的教学策略，洞察GIST在相关STEM领域，以及解决不同学习模式的工具，促进专业发展; 4）提供资源，包括国家计划地图，GIST能力评估，示范课程，计划，并通过GeoTech中心信息交换所提供额外服务;和5）通过创建能力协议，职业途径，GIST领域对各种行业都很重要，因此拥有一个能够满足其现有和不断变化的劳动力需求的教育领导者非常重要。该中心建立在以前的工作，并清楚地概述了所需的下一步，包括开发教学方法，深入的课程内容，以及学生和教师资源。 这些努力创建了一个专注于地理空间信息科学和技术的实践社区，因为它将教育工作者聚集在一起，致力于满足行业定义的需求，并展示了对教育的广泛的全国影响，这将有助于美国在实现GIST行业的基本核心需求时保持全球竞争力。

The National Geospatial Technology Center of Excellence (GeoTech Center) is a collaboration of two-year colleges, universities, professional organizations, and industry focused on a specialized set of information technologies referred to as Geospatial Information Science and Technology (GIST). The GeoTech Center embraces the opportunity to provide systemic educational change in GIST and assist in the proliferation of successful learners, thereby expanding the field with a well-qualified workforce having a recognized set of industry-defined skills and competencies. The goals of the GeoTech Center are to: 1) Build a Community of Practice focused on GIST by forging relationships between professionals from industry, government and academia; 2) Create and disseminate relevant GIST Curricula and pedagogical tools based upon the current needs of the geospatial industry and the expanding community of ancillary users; 3) Facilitate professional development by offering faculty access to innovative teaching strategies, insight into GIST in related STEM fields, and tools to address differing learning modalities; 4) Provide resources to include a national map of programs, GIST competency assessments, model courses, programs, and additional services through the GeoTech Center Clearinghouse; and 5) Support student success in GIST through the creation of competency protocols, career pathways, and career clusters.The GIST field is important to a variety of industries and therefore it is important to have an educational leader that can meet its existing and changing workforce demands. This Center builds upon previous work and clearly outlines the next steps that are needed, including developing pedagogical methods, in-depth curricular content, and student and faculty resources. These efforts create a community of practice focused on Geospatial Information Science and Technology, as it brings educators together to work on industry-defined needs and demonstrate a broad, national impact on education that will help the US remain globally competitive as essential core needs of the GIST industry are achieved.