Grants and Research
Developing an Interactive Campus map
PI. Dr. Hamilton, 6/2009 - 6/2012
$41,500
Please view the Campus Map link for more information.
From landscapes to cells: innovative approaches to spatial analyses (closed)
PI. Dr. Leu
PI. Dr. Hamilton, 8/2009 - 12/2009
QEP / Mellon (Internal)
$7,000
Creation of a Historical Campus DB
PI. Dr. Hamilton, 6/2009 - 6/2015
$36,000 annually + $40,00 one-time
Developing Research Opportunities in Undergraduate GIS classes (closed)
PI. Dr. Hamilton, 8/2009 - 12/2009
$1,500
An advanced GIS student with Spanish language skills will coordinate the collection of spatial data from numerous government bodies in South America and assist the students interpreting the data on these maps. The primary research goal is to calculate the amount of mangrove deforestation in pre-identified estuaries on Pacific Coast of Ecuador and Colombia since the advent of commercial aquaculture. The students will obtain primary data (aerial imagery, topographic maps) from the Instituto Geográfico Militar from differing time-periods and assess the changing levels of deforestation over time. The students will then track hecterage change over time for their specific estuaries and extrapolate these data to apply to the entire coast of the area of interest.
Another fellow will supervise another group of students within the same class focusing on a project in the same estuarine environments. The second fellow's students will utilize Landsat and Aster imagery to examine hyper-nutrified waters and the resultant eutrophication in the estuarine environments of the Pacific Coast of Ecuador and Colombia. Estuaries prone to eutrophication will be identified and the conditions (environment and time) will be examined to help expand on the reasons behind eutrophication.
Undergraduate Research Engagement and National Service: Collecting and Distributing School Attendance Boundaries for the United States (closed)
PI. Dr. Saporito
PI. Dr. Hamilton, 8/2009 - 12/2009
QEP / Mellon (Internal)
$17,000
We will enhance the current curricular offerings in Geographic Information Science and social science data analyses by offering an upper-level public policy course that teaches students to obtain, analyze and distribute data describing student populations living in school attendance boundaries. This course will allow students to engage in inquiry based learning by encouraging each of them to develop and answer a research question using the original data that they compile during the semester. The collection of novel data will provide continual opportunities for students to learn social science data collection, analysis, and interpretation on a research project that is significant empirically, theoretically, and for public policy. Since the data developed by each course section will be made available via the Internet the course also has a significant public service component in addition to its core mission of providing students with a research experience in data collection and analysis with original data.
Establishing a Teacher-Scholar Postdoctoral Program and a Center for Geospatial Analysis in the Environmental Science and Policy program at W&M
Grant writers, Dr. Hancock, Dr. Swaddle, Dr. Chambers, Dr. Strikwerda, Dr. Luvaas , 8/2008 - 6/2011
$1,500,000
The grant will allow the College to establish two new highly innovative programs: a Center for Geospatial Analysis and a "teacher-scholar" postdoctoral program in the interdisciplinary environmental science program.
The Mellon grant will provide for the establishment and staffing of the Center for Geospatial Analysis, one of the first in the nation at a liberal arts college of William and Mary's size. The new center will expand the College's use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), an emerging technology that uses computers to plot, layer and organize data. "GIS is a powerful, versatile and rapidly expanding research tool," noted Carl Strikwerda, Dean of Arts and Sciences at William and Mary. "Many researchers at William and Mary are already using GIS technology," Strikwerda said, noting that the CGA to be made possible by the Mellon funding will allow more students and faculty from across the College to learn GIS techniques.
