The Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies’ Community Geography program wishes to apply for a grant to develop the curriculum for a 1-2 week lab course in transportation-focused mapping and Geographic Information Systems (GIS), to be held in the summer of 2019.  The course will be geared towards girls of middle school and high school age, and would teach digital mapping and analysis,  as well as spatial and geographic concepts, all relating to themes around transportation and transportation-equity.

The curriculum will be jointly designed by the Institute of Portland Metropolitan Studies' Sachi Arakawa (GIS analyst) and Randy Morris (Community GIS program director) along with our community partner Christina Friedel, Geography and GIS chair at Portland Community College. With the advising of Dr. Nancee Hunter, director of PSU’s Center for Geography Education in Oregon, we will utilize our connections in the GIS field to bring in guest lecturers to talk about applications of GIS and mapping technology in transportation and urban planning, and use a “flipped classroom” approach, exposing students to real world transportation issues and discussing how mapping and spatial analysis can be applied to solving these problems.  As such, we will leverage existing relationships with community groups such as Oregon Walks, the Asian Pacific Islander Network of Oregon (APANO), Green Lents, and Living Cully to identify transportation-related issues in the community that the girls can discuss and apply GIS analysis to.  Guest speakers from these community groups may be invited to attend these sessions.

This curriculum will be designed as a survey and introduction to mapping and GIS, and can serve as a model for future GIS classes of a similar skill level, or as a jumping off point toward classes of a more advanced skill level or focusing on more specific areas of GIS such as web mapping or transportation network analysis.