Financial Support for Unpaid Internships

The BSU Foundation has generously provided funding to assist students in completing unpaid credit bearing internships.  Three awards of $2,000 each are available to qualifying juniors and seniors in the College of Science and Mathematics who secure and complete their internships during summer or fall 2011. Click here for full details, including deadlines and application packet.

Town of Chatham GIS Internship

Provided by Dr. Hellstrom:


Summer/Fall Semester 2011

Internship Contacts:    Paul Lagg, GIS Coordinator, Town of Chatham

                                    549 Main Street Chatham, MA 02633

(508) 945-5168

plagg@chatham-ma.gov

Internship Summary:

The major focus of this internship will be to evaluate and improve the organizational structure of Chatham’s GIS database. Intern will be required to submit a plan to re-organize the current database to improve ease of use, streamline workflow and increase data sharing among town staff. Intern will then implement plan with the assistance/supervision of the GIS Coordinator. In addition, the internship will involve the following duties:

• Create/edit new and existing data layers
• Create “meta data” for new/existing data layers
• Fieldwork utilizing Trimble GPS and Tablet PC (training will be provided)
• Scan/link documents to GIS using web-based document manager software

Candidate must possess a strong working knowledge of ArcGIS Desktop 9.x and/or ArcMap10, ArcCatalog, ArcToolbox and Microsoft Excel. Internship will require both fieldwork and office work.

Note: This is an unpaid internship. However, successful candidates will gain exposure to a wide range of land management issues including coastal resources management, infrastructure maintenance, planning and zoning. Candidate will also gain exposure to a plethora of data types and software used in the professional sphere of GIS these include: shapefiles, geodatabases, aerial photography, site plans and other relational databases. ArcGIS, Terrasync, Pathfinder Office, PeopleForms and MapsOnline.

This internship is geared toward candidates with a strong interest in pursuing a career in GIS/Land Use Management. All work performed will be expected to meet a high degree of accuracy. 

Mekong Update

Dr. Domingo is spending his sabbatical studying and teaching about water privatization in Malaysia. He recently sent this photograph following a lecture he gave on the subject in the geography department at the University of Malaya.

CLICK TO ENLARGE

As those who know Dr. Domingo will expect, he has not been spending all of his time in conference rooms! The series of photos below, in fact, were taken during a four-day excursion in Vietnam's Mekong Delta, a side trip he took "while in the neighborhood." These photos bear out his claim that the Mekong is a "geographer's delight!" He also explored Ho Chi Min City (Saigon) -- describing it as an incredible place of very high energy where he spent many hours on the back of a motorbike taxi (Xe Om).

Click any of the photos below to enlarge; we look forward to hearing the stories behind them when Dr. Domingo returns!

Food, Inc. Thursday Evening

BSU student Diana Ramos is president of Students for Ethical Eating, which was recently renamed Students for Sustainability to reflect its broader scope. Diana is guest blogger for this article about an important that should be of interest to geographers. For more on the connections between food and geography, see my Geography of Food web page.

Students for Sustainability will be showing the film Food, Inc. at 6pm on Thursday 4/21 at Bridgewater State University in the Rondileau Campus Center room 208. The film is a look at the industrialization of our food and the impacts it has had on humans, animals, and the environment. Here is just a small glimpse into what the film covers:

Mashed Potatoes. Think of the last time you have eaten them. Maybe this week, last month, or perhaps they are mostly just a Thanksgiving staple for you. But such a seemingly simple dish, just with its basic 4 ingredients being potatoes, milk, butter, and salt, is very complex. It is most likely you didn’t dig the potatoes out of the ground yourself, nor milked a cow, nor churned the butter, nor gathered the salt. In fact you may have not even cooked it yourself. Thanks to the industrialization of the food system, food is more convenient than ever. Now we have instant mashed potatoes where you simply add water, or better yet the Kentucky Fried Chicken down the road has some already made and at an appealing price for your convenience.

But if it is so easy and cheap now to get our food, what happens before the attendant at the drive through window passes along the branded paper bag? This is the story that the documentary Food, Inc. aims to reveal. While we used to get our milk in glass jars from the dairy man and the milk was produced by a dairy farmer we knew with a dozen or so grass grazing cows that lived not so far away, now we get our milk from giant food superstores where they come from factory farms with hundreds of corn, soy, antibiotic, and hormone fed cows, that are hundreds if not over a thousand miles away. The industrialization of our food has led to an illusion of choice over what we eat when in essence they are really just different manifestations of corn, soy, and wheat. As the American diet has changed to take advantage of this convenience of pre-made food, so too has the American gut grown. Poor diet related illnesses such as diabetes have also  grown. This is issue is exacerbated in communities that are “food deserts” where all that is available is convenience and highly process foods.

Above is a map showing the percentage of households by county with limited access to supermarkets (source: LAist) ; below that is a map of diabetes rate per capita by county (source: PotatoPro).

 But human health isn’t the only thing at stake, so is the health of our environment. The chemical fertilizers and pesticides used on farms today degrade soil quality, which leads to a vicious cycle of putting more chemical fertilizer to make up for the loss. But these chemicals don’t just stay in the ground, when it rains, they flow with the water to whatever streams of rivers are near. One of the best known examples of the effects is the dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico (source: USDA Amber Waves). In this zone (which is about the size of New Jersey), the run-off of large agribusiness farms has dumped nitrogen (the main base of fertilizers)  into the rivers that flow to the gulf which has lead to depletion of oxygen to the point where aquatic life can’t be supported.

But there is much more to the story. If you want to find out more about the hidden face of industrialized food systems, join Students for Sustainability this Thursday. Mashed potatoes will never seem the same again.

~~ Diana Ramos

What Geographers Do ... and Make

In the 1989 film Dead Poets Society, the Robin Williams character says:

… medicine, law, business, engineering: these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.

Geographers have the good fortune of being able to pursue both a livelihood and a life within their chosen field. The Association of American Geographers (AAG) has identified 90 occupations that require geographic skills, and has compiled salary and employment data for each.

Employment and salaries in many categories remain remarkably strong, especially given the very difficult economy of the past few years. Our recent anecdotal experience suggests that graduate-school -- a common refuge during recessions -- is becoming much more competitive. And although jobs in any field are more difficult to find than in the recent past, geospatial skills (i.e., GIS) remain in high demand.

Salaries and employment trends are probably not valid as primary reasons to choose an academic path. But it is good to know that the study of geography can offer both personal and professional rewards.

Geography Visibility

State legislators, tourists, and Boston Globe readers had an opportunity to learn about the importance of geography last week, as the department's EarthView was displayed in the State House for the second time. Read about it on the EarthView blog, and stay tuned for more about geography education in the Commonwealth.

Domingo Update

Members and friends of the Geography Department will be pleased -- but not surprised -- to know that Dr. Domingo is busily applying his knowledge of and enthusiasm for geography while on sabbatical in Malaysia. While living in Melaka and continuing his work on access to water at the University of Malaya, he took a short trip to Cambodia. There he visited the famous Angkor Wat and -- more importantly -- spent some time with Dr. Kevin Curry, our colleague from the Biology Department, on his projects providing clean water in small villages.


Writing to us just today, Dr. Domingo shared his impression that: 

"...people you meet even casually, know more about the the people and places that make up our world than the average American does. Purposeful travel is important but without the full inclusion of geography in the school curriculum, the U.S. will never be able to close the geographic literacy gap. Where else but in the geography curriculum will students learn about the monsoons, the diffusion of Hinduism and Buddhism, the role of the trading in the Straits of Melaka, the dynamism of the city-state of Singapore, and of course the economic emergence of China?"

 He also shared a few photographs (click to enlarge):

With Dr. Curry in Cambodia

Dr. Curry demonstrating water filter

A good geographer always notices the

local transportation.

Dr. Domingo with geography graduate students,
University of Malaya

Dr. Domingo is out-standing in his field!
(a rice padi, that is!)

Summer Grants for Sustainability Resesarch

The Center for Sustainability (CfS) is announcing its 2011 Summer Grant Competition to support research and creative activities related to sustainability projects.  The Instructions and Application forms for Summer 2011 are available from any faculty member.  The application deadline for the 10-week summer grant program is Friday, April 22.  Please note that the CfS summer grant program runs in parallel with the ATP summer program.  Students who applied for an ATP summer grant and did not receive funding may now apply for a CfS summer grant, but should speak with the CfS coordinators for suggestions on how to strengthen their proposal.

A series of Information Sessions and Workshops are listed below.  If neither you or your student are able to attend these sessions, please contact Ed Brush in Chemistry to set up a 1:1 meeting.

CfS Summer Grants Information Sessions: 

Monday, April 4, 11-1 Office of Undergraduate Research (Maxwell 200)….Lunch provided!

Tuesday, April 5, 11-1 Office of Undergraduate Research (Maxwell 200)….Lunch provided!

CfS Summer Grant Review Workshops – CfS personnel will review preliminary student proposals and provide feedback:

Thursday, April 14, 11-1 Office of Undergraduate Research (Maxwell 200)….Lunch provided!

Friday, April 15, 2-3:30 Office of Undergraduate Research (Maxwell 200)….Lunch provided!

Internships in Geography

Geography faculty just received the following message from Tracey Gray in Career Services. It looks like our talented students are in demand!

I wanted to alert you to three great internship prospects for students in your academic department as indicated below. 

Habitat Restoration Intern, The Trustees of Reservations                                                                         Job ID # 3842Help The Trustees of Reservations to monitor and restore a rare Atlantic White Cedar swamp at Copicut Woods. Responsibilities include:
• Inventory and use GPS to map all existing Atlantic White Cedar trees.
• Assess the cedar stand for evidence of disease or decay.
• Measure trees to determine diameter, height, crown spread and age.
• Conduct swamp transects to measure depth of peat layer and water depth at various times of year.
• Assess the impact of deer browsing on trees and explore methods to reduce impact of browsing.
• Assist with transplanting trees from tree nursery into swamp.
• Remove competing trees and shrubs from restoration site.

Transportation Planning Intern, SRPEDD                                                                                                      Job ID # 3935Students will assist staff with a wide array of data collection efforts including, but not limited to the following:
Traffic Counting Program and other highway transportation related programs-assist in data collection efforts that include:
• installation of automatic traffic counting devices on various highways
• manual traffic counts at signalized/non-signalized intersections
• vehicle crash data at local police departments
• use data base, spreadsheets and other software programs for data entry

Pavement Management-assist in data collect efforts that include:
• pavement condition surveys of Federal Aid Eligible roadways
• data entry of surveys into computer software program

Transit Planning-assist in data collection efforts that include:
• bus and train passenger surveys
• ridership data input

Geographic Roadway Runoff Inventory Program (GRRIP)-assist in data collection efforts that include:
• field work to inventory, evaluate and photograph roadway drainage structures and surrounding environs
• mapping (GIS), data entry and cataloging of photos for analysis and report development

Planning Intern, Town of Easton – Department of Planning and Community Development            Job ID # 3852           The Department of Planning and Community Development in the Town of Easton, Massachusetts seeks an intern to take part in a variety of department activities. Assignments will include assisting staff in a number of substantial projects relating to government funding, community outreach, zoning policy research, GIS analysis, and conservation policy. Some light administrative work will also be required. This will allow the intern to become familiar with day-to-day operations of a suburban, municipal planning department. Depending upon the intern’s demonstrated competence and department need, staff will consider including the intern in additional projects which the intern may find to be of interest.

Faculty and staff can view these opportunities as well as other full-time openings and internships listings by proceeding to CareerLink@BSU at: https://www.myinterfase.com/bridgew/faculty/home.aspx, entering faculty as both their Username and Password  and typing in the Job ID #.

Please share the above opportunities with colleagues and encourage your students to apply.  Students can create their own username and password at https://www.myinterfase.com/bridgew/student/home.aspx to access all of our listings.

Department Survey

BSU Geography Alumni -- if you have not already done so, the department would really appreciate your feedback on our program. Please take a few minutes to take our program survey.