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Showing posts with the label muncie

The Star Press: BSU maps county's most needy areas

In TSP's Sunday paper, Seth Slabaugh gives a good overview of our interactions with community partners this semester, with quotes from two students: Ryan Cooper and Bryan Preston.  Read the story, here . MUNCIE -- Ball State University is making maps to help the community identify its neediest areas, including severely eroded river banks, neighborhoods heavy with low-income residents who are without health care and historic homes lacking attention. Then it's up to the agencies to use those maps to visually see solutions. Two of Ball State's geographic information system (GIS) workshops are helping the United Way and Open Door Health Services locate low-income residents who need public assistance. Another one is showing the city of Muncie which of the century-old homes in the Emily Kimbrough Historic District need to be repaired. A fourth shows where soil is eroding into the White River, turning the water the color of coffee with cream. "We know the data, we know the po...

GIS Workshop: Building participatory GIS skills through community partnership

I'm facilitating a new take on an existing course at Ball State University this semester, developed with support from BSU's Emerging Media Initiative at the Center for Media Design .  GEOG448/548 is now ' GIS Workshop ', drawing on my previous experience supporting a similar course in the Dept. of Geography at the University of Washington, lead by Prof. Sarah Elwood (see also Elwood 2009 ).  In GIS Workshop, we'll have 20 students partner on around eight community-based projects to help the students learn collaborative- and participatory-research skills, while supporting community organizations to further their mission using spatial technologies. I'm excited about our potential community partners this semester: United Way of Delaware County , Open Door and Ball Memorial Hospital , the Indiana 500 Trail Project, and the City of Muncie Animal Shelter .  Students will have the opportunity to work on projects that focus on the social (justice) geographies of ...