UNIGIS in Saudi Arabia

In the presence of the Saudi Minister of Higher Education, His Excellency Dr. Khalid Al Anqari on April 28, 2010 an academic cooperation agreement was signed between King Abdulaziz University of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and the University of Salzburg Center for Geoinformatics (Z_GIS).
The signatories Prof Osama S. Tayyeb, President of King Abdulaziz University (KAU) and Prof Josef Strobl, Chair of UNIGIS International and Director of Z_GIS are aiming at establishing a dual degree program between these two universities. With the intent of starting a joint postgraduate distance learning program later in 2010, the globally recognized UNIGIS qualifications will be made available to students from Saudi Arabia.
The Department of Geography, KAU will serve as a UNIGIS study centre and thus extend the reach of UNIGIS into the Arab Peninsula. Prof Al-Doaan, chair of the KAU Geography Department has been providing leadership to this initiative throughout the last year, and Dr. Mohamed Amri will be serving as program coordinator. Further program details will be available through www.unigis.net/jeddah!

UNIGIS with ESRI at Latin America GIS Edu Conference

UNIGIS is cooperating with ESRI in organising and contributing to the Latin America GIS Education Conference hosted by SIGSA, announced for September 21, 2010 in Mexico City: http://www.sigsa.info/lauc2010/edu.html

The conference flyer offers additional details for this event which will bring together the Latin America GIS educators' community sharing their experiences, discussing curricula, educational pedagogies and methods, and models for GIS labs.

UIA Academic Excellence Prize 2010

The UNIGIS International Association (UIA) is pleased to announce the third 'UNIGIS International Academic Excellence Price' competition. We would like to recognize authors of the most outstanding master theses (or published scientific papers based upon a thesis) submitted at UNIGIS universities worldwide during the academic year 2009/10.

The criteria used to evaluate the theses include: technical quality, quality of literature review, relevance, presentation and originality. We are hoping for standards as high as last year.

The competition for the 2010 Prize is now open. Candidates must submit their MSc thesis or their paper through the respective UIA partner institution no later than July 15.

UNIGIS en America Latina – first intake 2010

The UNIGIS program in Latin America that is coordinated by the University San Francisco de Quito (USFQ) is happy to announce its first intake in 2010. By the end of March a group of 50 postgraduate students from Ecuador, Colombia and other Latin American countries were successfully enrolled in the two year UNIGIS master program. Two residential seminars were held to welcome the new students on March, 20th at USFQ, Quito (Ecuador) and March 27th at CIAT (International Center for Tropical Agriculture, Cali, Colombia). The recently enrolled students can count on a distance learning qualification offered in Spanish language that is specifically tailored to particular needs of GIS professionals in Latin America. Welcome – Bienvenidos!

UNIGIS worldwide - record number of students in 2009!

For the first time, the annual number of new students starting with a postgraduate UNIGIS distance learning / online studies program at one of the worldwide partner universities including study centres has exceeded 500. The increasing popularity of UNIGIS qualifications -2010 numbers are expected to be significantly higher- demonstrates the importance of lifelong learning in a growing field like Geographic Information Systems and Geoinformatics.
This success emphasizes the objective to 'Educate GIS Professionals Worldwide', with UNIGIS having reached the aim of being a virtual and multilingual university, connecting partner universities worldwide.