University Consortium for
Geographic Information Science
www.ucgis.org

Internet Survey of Members

Mary Lou Larson, Membership Committee
 Bistra Anatchkova, Survey Research Center (SCR, and
 Burke D. Grandjean (SRC)

During the spring of 2004, UCGIS conducted an internet survey of members.  The goal of the survey was to gather information about how people view UCGIS membership, any difficulties they have had with membership, and what members would like to know about UCGIS. Mary Lou Larson, UCGIS Membership chair consulted with the Survey Research Center (SRC), who developed the research design and the internet survey using WebSurveyor (a commercial Web platform). Use of the SRC and the internet survey software guaranteed respondents anonymity.  The survey invited all 954 UCGIS participants at 70 member institutions to participate.  An initial e-mail sent out on April 15, 2004 gave participants the Web address for the survey, and explained how the SRC would protect their anonymity.  When data collection ended on May 25, 2004, we received response from 217 individuals – yielding our most conservative estimate of a 22.9% response rate.  Survey questions elicited responses about the benefits of UCGIS membership to institutions and individuals, whether or not UCGIS should add an individual member category, whether members would like to learn more about other institution’s and member’s experiences with UCGIS.  Another segment of the survey asked respondents’ how satisfied they are with UCGIS accomplishments in its general mission of fostering GIS research, education, and policy & legislation.  One other section of the survey asked respondents’ to tell us what they know about UCGIS and what the organization offers them.  A full report of the survey will be presented at the UCGIS meeting at College Park, Maryland in October and will be posted on the UCGIS web page following that meeting. Finally, an enticement for answering the web survey was the offer of free registration at GIScience2004  -- SRC selected Kevin Curtin from University of Texas -Dallas as the recipient of the paid registration.

SPACE Workshop Proposals

Benjamin Zhan, Sponsored Projects Committee

SPACE (Spatial Perspectives for Analysis in Curriculum Enhancement) is an NSF-funded program that is managed through a consortium consisting of the University of California, Santa Barbara; The Ohio State University, and UCGIS. SPACE is dedicated to the dissemination of spatial analytic approaches in undergraduate social science programs www.csiss.org/SPACE. UCGIS will select member institutions to deliver SPACE Workshops in 2005 and 2006. The UCGIS Sponsored Projects Committee has received proposals from member institutions for delivering SPACE workshops. The committee is in the process of organizing reviews for the proposals. An award decision will be made by the end of October in 2004.

next page