The University Consortium for Geographic Information and Analysis (UCGIS) was established in 1995, with UB as one of its founding members. UCGIS members are US Universities and other non-profit research institutions. (For more about UCGIS, see http://www.ucgis.org/) One of the main goals of UCGIS is to prioritize and promote important research topics in Geographic Information Science. As part of this effort, seminars will be held at several UCGIS member institutions (including Louisiana State University, Michigan State, Washington, West Virginia, Georgia, Colorado, UC Santa Barbara, and SUNY Buffalo, and probably others).

The plan is to have a single, distributed seminar on the topic, with students at all of the institutions interacting with other students, and instructors, at other institutions. Details are still being worked out. The major topics discussed in the course will be:

* Spatial Data Acquisition and Integration

* Distributed Computing

* Extensions to Geographic Representation

* Cognition of Geographic Information

* Interoperability of Geographic Information

* Scale

* Spatial Analysis in a GIS Environment

* The Future of the Spatial Information Infrastructure

* Uncertainty in Spatial Data and GIS-Based Analyses

* GIS and Society

Each student will be expected to have some involvement with all 10 topics. A schedule has been developed with the 10-week length of an academic "Quarter" in mind: During the first five weeks, each student should prepare a one-paragraph contribution to each of the 10 topics, in the form of an addition to the content of the topic, a proposed research project, or an examination of some part of the topic in depth. After the fifth week, each student should elect one topic of the 10, and contribute a 2-page discussion of the topic. After 10 weeks, each student should contribute a full paper on the elected topic. Since we have about 14 weeks in a semester at Buffalo, there can be time for paper revisions in the last 4 weeks.

The grade for students taking the seminar for credit will be based primarily on the paper, which will be evaluated both by the topic leader and by the UB instructor of record (Mark). About 20 % of the grade will be reserved for the student's participation in discussions in the seminar and on the internet.

We will have a faculty member at one of the participating institutions act as leader of record for each of the 10 topics. This person will advise the students who elect that topic, regardless of what institution the student is at. We also will have some mechanism for sharing information on the selection of topics, to minimize the chance that some topics end up empty and others are hopelessly oversubscribed. But this way, students will have the opportunity to work intensively with one leader over an extended period.