Multidisciplinary Cooperation in GIS Education: A Case Study of US Colleges and Universities

Abstract

This paper examines the degree of multidisplinary cooperation for Geographic Information Science (GIS) education programs that award GIS-related degrees or certificates at US colleges and universities. We classified departments and courses into ten major disciplines using Dewey Decimal Classification. In the 2007–2008 academic year, approximately 40 per cent of GIS education programs related to multiple disciplines and nearly 20 per cent were involved with more than three disciplines. Geography was the major provider of GIS education programs, but the ratio between geography-related discipline and other disciplines combined was approximately 1:3. Fostering multidisciplinary GIS education programs should strengthen geography in general as well as GIS education.

Keywords:

• GIS education programs
• multidisciplinary cooperation
• geography
• computer science
• US colleges and universities

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by the Fukutake Science and Culture Foundation, JSPS KAKENHI (17200052, 17202023, 21240075), and US National Science Foundation ATE Program, National Geospatial Technology Center (DUE #0801893). We are grateful to the members of these grant projects for their valuable comments and suggestions. We also thank the editor and the reviewers for their constructive comments and suggestions.