UNIGIS @ GISSA AGM & Conference

UNIGIS Sub-Saharan Africa was one of the sponsors for this year’s GISSA AGM & Conference. GISSA represents the Geo-Information community in South Africa as a national, unified, representative body to promote and protect the interests of its members. 

A student event was held with quite a number of the Eastern Cape Students."It is nice to finally meet our lecturer", said Khanya Ntleki from Buffalo City Metropolitan Municipality. Thozama Dyonase mentioned the presence of UNIGIS at the GISSA conference helped us foresee what’s ahead in the course and what to look out for in the future.

UNIGIS Academic Excellence Award 2013

During the UNIGIS International annual network meeting, held this year in Krakow - Poland, the 2013 winner and runners-up in the UNIGIS Academic Excellence Award, dedicated to the network's top Master's theses, were announced:

First place;
- and Winner of the Academic Excellence Award - Victoria Ann CLIFF (UNIGIS - Sub Saharan Africa), for her thesis entitled: "The integration of GPS and GIS technologies as a methodology to monitor beach-dune systems: Port Elizabeth, South Africa".

Shared second place;
- Maja RAPP (UNIGIS - Salzburg), for the thesis: "Biomass-mapping of alpine grassland with APEX imaging spectrometry data".
- Jeroen Gerhard STEENBEEK (UNIGIS - Manchester/Amsterdam), thesis title: "Bridging the gap between ecosystem modelling tools using Geographic Information Systems".

The award jury, comprising members from UNIGIS UK and Lisbon, and chaired by Jacek Kozak from UNIGIS Krakow, acknowledged the high standards achieved by all the Master’s theses entered for this year’s award from across the UNIGIS International network.  The final decision on the award winner and runners-up was based on assessing all entries against criteria comprising: literature review, technical and methodological quality, relevance, presentation and originality.  The final decision between the top three was extremely tight. Congratulations to all the winners!!!

Annual UNIGIS network meeting @Krakow

This weekend, UNIGIS Krakow is hosting the annual worldwide network meeting at the Jagiellonian University, Krakow. As one of the oldest European universities, 'UJ' was one of the first to adopt the innovative distance learning approach for geospatial professionals, and already is serving as a venue for this gathering for the second time.

Program directors and course coordinators from 10 partner institutions are working through a dense agenda including curriculum coordination, development of study modules, linkage with technology providers, novel elearning technologies, alumni relations and outreach concepts. The value added from integrating the competences and capacities across a global network of dedicated educators clearly demonstrates the uniqueness of UNIGIS.

Suchith Anand from the ICA Commission on Open Source Geospatial Technologies was discussing the potential for closer cooperation with UNIGIS partners within the framework of the "Geo for All" initiative, including the role of ICA-OSGeo labs in making students familiar with OS technologies.

UNIGIS is a worldwide network of universities cooperating since the early 1990ies in the design and delivery of distance learning in Geographical Information Systems and Science. The UNIGIS network offers Postgraduate Certificate, Diploma and Masters courses, aiming at 'Educating GIS Professionals Worldwide'.

Starting in Salzburg, 18 (future) GI-professionals will make their way!

Last weekend was a perfect start. A start not just into a year of demanding coursework, but also a start to advance careers by acquiring a comprehensive set of skills and competences in applied Geoinformatics.  After finishing their UNIGIS professional studies, our new group of 18 committed people with backgrounds in Archeology, Botany, Geography, Geology, Ecology, Forestry, Landscape Architecture and Surveying will be able to make out more of their spatial data. 

They all  will know how to use of GIS and related technologies to acquire, model, distribute and analyze geolocated data, how to derive meaningful information from it and how to communicate this information to others by means of clear and easy to understand maps and visualizations. Since spatial is special, having competence in “spatial” is special in the job market as well. A look into the careers of numerous UNIGIS alumni provides proof enough. We from the UNIGIS Salzburg team will try our best to support our new students along their individual learning paths and wish a successful year of study!

UNIGIS Girona starts the 16th edition!

 
This new academic year UNIGIS Girona starts its 16th edition and more than 40 new students have enrolled the UNIGIS Programme. They are already part of the worldwide UNIGIS community. 



The number of registrations remains edition after edition and this is a proof of UNIGIS Programme's succes. We train professionals capable of managing, implementing and developing Geographic Information Systems to address and resolve the needs and demands of the professional world.

UNIGIS Girona team will continue working hard in order to guarantee the success and recognition of UNIGIS training offer.  

UNIGIS Girona website