USM GIS Community Outreach Work

  A central part of our work at USM-GIS is to serve as a community resource. We do this in several ways:

1. Software Consortium. We are the hub of the Maine Educational GIS Consortium, having organized, maintained and supported this consortial GIS license for three years. This license currently provides unlimited ESRI GIS software at approximately 90% cost reduction per campus, to twelve Maine university and college campuses (USM, UMF, UMFK, UMA, UMM, UMPI, University of New England, College of the Atlantic, Colby, Bates, Bowdoin, and Unity). We provide technical support for the group.

2. Curriculum Consortium. We are the hub of a five campus group (USM, UMF, UMFK, UMA, and UMM) that is developing a statewide GIS curriculum supported by our most recent NSF grant. Technical support, data preparation, manual writing, and site visits for this effort are undertaken or coordinated here.

3. GIS Clinic. We run a weekly three-hour open GIS clinic in which lab staff, faculty, and students provide free consulting, advice, and technical support to anyone who attends. This is done on a walk-in basis rather than appointment schedule. We regularly help people with data issues, operational questions, implementation plans, and a host of other issues. This event takes place in the GIS Lab on the Gorham Campus.

Recent clients include:

• Colby College
• Cumberland County Soil & Water Conservation District
• Greater Portland Council of Governments
• Maine Audubon Society
• Maine Historic Preservation Commission
• Portland Police Department
• Presumpscot River Watch
• Students from North Yarmouth Academy
• Town of Brunswick
• Town of Gorham
• Town of Harpswell
• Town of Scarborough
• Town of South Bristol
• Town of Standish
• Town of Windham

In addition, we have a steady stream of local citizens and GIS professionals who visit the clinics to learn more about what we do here.

4. Local, Regional, and National GIS Professional Community. Members of the lab staff and faculty have contributed to the State Geolibrary Board, the Maine State GIS User Group, and the Greater Portland GIS Roundtable. We maintain an extensive GIS listserv that is distributed to the local user community. We host a GIS Day event each year. We have periodic brown-bag lunch GIS seminar and lecture series, open to the general public, showcasing developments in GIS. We are a contributing CORS (Continuously Operating Receiver) GPS base station, sending data to the National Geodetic Service as part of their ongoing public service and research work.