University Consortium for
Geographic Information Science
www.ucgis.org

In this  issue

From the Desk of the President

Since our October 2004 Assembly in Baltimore, UCGIS has been moving forward on a number of fronts. Jack Sanders, who joined UCGIS in August of 2004 and helped organize and make the Assembly successful, has settled in as our Executive Director. He has taken over the necessary operations to maintain UCGIS, but more fundamentally, he is moving to help establish new contacts and define our role better with respect to interaction with Federal agencies and Congress. His success in these efforts depends on our delegates communicating with him and providing him necessary information concerning our goals and capabilities.

Although the time has been short, we have moved forward with an award of the 2005 and 2006 SPACE Workshop grants to San Francisco State University and the University of Oklahoma, respectively. The USGS Post Doc position was not awarded, but negotiation with USGS has led to a solution that will provide more funds for the award and an award will be made in 2005. We are now Co-Sponsors of two upcoming conferences, the Auto-Carto 2005 Research Symposium in Las Vegas, Nevada, March 21-23, 2005 and Integration of Remote Sensing and GIS for Detection and Prediction of Contamination and Degradation of Water and Agricultural Resources in Kiev, Ukraine in June 2005.

In planning our meetings and assemblies, we held a successful competition among UCGIS member institutions for an opportunity to present research results related to GIScience and health issues at the Winter 2005 Congressional Breakfast. Six proposals were selected in an effort coordinated by Dr. Sean Ahearn of Hunter College. We have also secured the facilities for our Summer Assembly in Jackson, Wyoming for June 28-July 2, 2005. Planning of the event is underway with Mary Lou Larson coordinating local activities.

While the time since our Assembly was two months shorter than usual because of the October timeframe to join GIScience 2004, events continue to require the attention of the Board and Council. We will be electing three new Board members and a president-elect in the Winter Meeting and hope that all delegates will join us.

E. Lynn Usery

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