Institute for Geospatial Impact

About

A strong partner with geospatial industry leader, Esri, the IGI thrives on the cutting-edge application of the company's innovative technologies in higher education. The IGI designs spatial instructional activities, supports spatial instruction, and teaches GIS courses; engages in interdisciplinary spatial research; creates opportunities for spatial students to participate in community-based service-learning projects; fits students to spatial internships and career opportunities; organizes spatial networking events; and supports the use of GIS for campus planning, operations, maintenance, and sustainability.

If you would like to join as a guest, please contact us at SpatialStudies@redlands.edu.

Mission

The Institute for Geospatial Impact (IGI) is a hub for geographic discovery, innovation, practical application, service, and community at the University of Redlands. The IGI:

• Fosters the use of geographic information systems (GIS) and related technologies to advance the university's mission to welcome, educate, and empower a diverse community of learners for lives of meaning, impact, and joy.
• Thrives on collaborations with geospatial industry leader, Esri, as an early adopter and cutting-edge user of the company's innovative technologies in higher education.
• Designs spatial instructional activities and supports spatially enabled courses across the curriculum.
• Engages in interdisciplinary spatial research with students and faculty.
• Creates opportunities for students to participate in community-based service-learning projects and internships that apply spatial thinking perspectives and geospatial technologies.
• Organizes events at which students, faculty, and staff share their expertise and accomplishments.
• Employs geospatial technologies to support campus planning, operations, maintenance, and sustainability.
• Promotes access to career opportunities for students by matching students to spatial internships and job placements at Esri, federal and other governmental agencies, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), private businesses, and the university itself.
• Provides opportunities for students through local, regional, national, and international community service and research projects to engage in social action, solve real-world problems, and help create a better future for all of us.

Spatial Studies Minor

In almost any discipline, spatial-thinking skills enrich analysis and improve decisions. You'd use them to determine the ideal locations for a tattoo parlor or for a wind turbine, to understand the social interactions of people along a beach or of otters along a coast, to model the flows of religious doctrines across a country or of fuel and oxidizer across a combustion chamber, or even to visualize the interplay of musical themes in a symphony.

Spatial thinking is the use of two- and three-dimensional representations of information to structure problems, find answers, and express solutions. The ability to visualize and interpret location, distance, direction, relationships, movement and change through space is fundamental to content understanding and problem solving. Spatial literacy is a critical skill in the sciences, humanities, and social sciences; indeed, a spatial approach helps to reveal the interdisciplinary, interconnected nature of many problems. Learning to think spatially is a form of learning how to learn.

At the University of Redlands, students apply spatial thinking in creative and exciting ways for research and study in anthropology, biology, business, chemistry, economics, environmental studies, gender studies, history, government, religious studies, and sociology. The University’s goal is to empower students to create a better world through meaningful applications of spatial thinking in their personal, academic, and professional lives.

Staff