Alumnus Sean O’Connor graduated with honors (BS 2005) that included Outstanding Achievement as a Geography Major, Distinction in the Major, and being awarded the Jack and Laura Dangermond Undergraduate Fellowship. To top that, he also landed a National Geographic Internship which he followed up with full time employment at Bridges.org, “an international organization with a mission to promote the effective use of information and communications in the developing world for meaningful purposes.” Sean went on to become an AAAS Burma Conflict Analyst for the Geospatial Technologies and Human Rights Project and then entered the Communication, Culture, and Technology Master of Arts program at Georgetown University in the fall of 2007 while simultaneously working for National Geographic. He received his MA in 2009 with a thesis titled “Conditions for spatial empowerment: An analysis of advocacy and education participatory mapping exercises.” The following is an update of Sean’s impressive activities with National Geographic over the past 2 years:
“We recently launched the new National Geographic Education website — the online portal that serves as an outreach arm for National Geographic programs to the education community, and also as a platform to promote geographic skills and thinking and geography as a career and discipline. I’ve been working on the Education Online team for the past two years as the project manager of education mapping, which means if you see a map on the website, I’ve had my hands on it. We launched a couple of new mapping tools to engage students in basic mapping and GIS skills, including our MapMaker Interactive and MapMaker 1-Page Map tools. We also have a suite of large-format printable maps of the world, continents, and the United States that are perfect for university geography clubs to bring out into area classrooms to show younger students how awesome geography is (hint, hint). You can find activities on our site to use with them, for grades K-12.
The news and reference section also includes a phenomenal suite of articles and encyclopedic entries on geography topics, such as entries on geographic terms like fold mountains, ocean vents, and buttes (if it’s not clear already, I’m a big physical geography geek…but there are lots of great human and cultural geography topics covered, too!)
One particular item I’m proud of is a profile I had the opportunity to write on Chris Funk‘s work with FEWS NET. Chris was my climatology instructor at UCSB. I was fascinated by his and his team’s work pairing remote sensing techniques with climatological studies, so was keen to write this profile on Chris when the opportunity arose.
I hope all the geographers out there will take a few minutes to check out the new site. Teachers and students are the main intended audience, but it’s really got a little something for everybody, especially geography nerds like us!”
