The committee met on May 23 to select a member (me!) to represent it on the MAGIP board.

At that time the members identified a number of issues that the committee could work on.

I have identified a number of potential agenda items and placed them on the Education Committee web page at: http://www.magip.org/EducationCom

Please read these and let me know if you would like to lead the discussion on one of them at the upcoming Education Committee meeting in July (date to be determined).

AGENDA ITEMS:

· Meet with guidance staff at Bigfork High School and explain the opportunities for college education in GIS. Denny Rea told us they have a counselor who is discouraging students from pursuing GIS as a career.

· The Montana Office of Public Instruction has curriculum standards for many areas, but none of these include GIS. Meet with Kristen Crawford, the OPI Science Curriculum Specialist, to find out what the process is for working GIS into Montana’s Science Curriculum.

· Organize a GIS Day activity in your town.

· School administrators could be GIS users! ESRI will give them free ArcGIS software. We need someone who can get word out to school administrators on how GIS could help them.

· MAGIP has “geospatial trunks” with materials to help teachers put together GIS activities for the classes. We need som eone to find out about the trunks and work with Heather Almquist of the Montana Geographic Alliance and Lisa Bickell of the Montana Natural History Center to update them and help find teachers who can use them.

· Two teachers known to be involved with GIS are Suzi Flentie in Lewistown and Dean Thompson in Libby. Get in touch with them and find out if we can help them or they can help us understand how to help teachers better.

· There are great resources already out there for GIS education, such as ESRI and the Montana Geographic Alliance. See what they have and whether they can help us with any of these tasks.

· Find out why we don’t get more scholarship and grant applications. Are the amounts too small? Are we doing everything we should to publicize them?

· MAGIP formerly had a $20,000 endowment which earned money that we used to fund our scholarships. Because of a problem with the managers of the endowment, this was split into two halves and turned over to the UM Foundation and MSU Foundation. Find out if these funds are currently granting any scholarships.

FROM Gerry Daumiller, Montana State Library