Dr. Joseph J. Kerski will give the annual Reginald G. and Allison L. Golledge Distinguished Lecture in Geography this coming April. Kerski is the Education Industry Curriculum Development Manager for ESRI, and, among his other distinctions, he serves on the Executive Planning Board of the National Council for Geographic Education and is a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society. “Sleepwalking Into the Future: Society without Spatial Thinking” is the title of the lecture, and the Abstract comments: “Climate change, biodiversity loss, energy, water quality and availability, human health, sustainable agriculture, urban sprawl, transportation, and natural hazards are global issues that increasingly affect our everyday lives. Central to grappling with each of these and other key issues of the 21st Century is the ability to think spatially and to use geospatial technologies.” Join Geographer Joseph Kerski as he discusses the challenges of embedding spatial thinking and technologies in education and the societal implications of failing to do so.
The Golledge Distinguished Lecture will be held on Thursday April 3, 3:30 – 5:00 pm, in Buchanan 1930. Kerski will give a brown bag lunchtime talk the following day in EH 3621 titled “Isn’t That Spatial? GIS in Education and Society”; Abstract: Why should GIS and spatial thinking be taught in formal and informal education? How can these concepts and skills be taught? In what contexts should they be taught? What value do they bring to educators and students?” Join Geographer Joseph Kerski as he discusses progress in teaching spatial concepts and skills over the past two decades and what remains to be done to effect systemic change in education.
The Reginald G. and Allison L. Golledge Distinguished Lecture was instituted in 1984 when Professor Reginald Golledge lost his sight. Without vision, keeping abreast of ongoing research in his fields of interest was a major problem for Reg, so the Department, with backing from Professors Waldo Tobler and David Simonett, established a named Distinguished Lecture Series to enable Reg to invite scholars whose work related to his interest areas to the department for 3-4 days a year and to interact with them personally. Contributions were solicited from the discipline and from Department members, and a fund was set up with the UCSB Development office to help pay the expenses of bringing in such a person. The Golledge Lecture is, indeed, a “distinguished lecture” that is widely recognized across the discipline and is a part of our departmental image, having been one of the academically evaluated dimensions of this department since 1985.
