Biology

WKU GIS student Tiffanee Lang of Las Vegas, Nev., has been selected for an assistantship for this summer’s 35^th Annual Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri) International User Conference in San Diego.

This marks the 13th year in a row that a student from the Department of Geography and Geology’s Geographic Information Science program has been selected for the assistantship.

Lang will graduate next weekend with a major in Systems Management concentrating in GIS and minoring in GIS. Her interests in geographic information systems (GIS) are in enterprise GIS architecture, web mapping development and centralizing geospatial data.

Esri selects 60 graduate and fourth-year undergraduate students from a pool of applicants for the competitive scholarships from universities and colleges throughout the United States. The scholarships require students to work half-days for a week at the conference in exchange for their conference registration, workshops, meals and lodging. This year’s conference is scheduled for July 14-18 at the San Diego Convention Center.

More than 15,300 attendees from 118 countries attended last year’s Esri International User Conference. Esri is the largest vendor of GIS software and hosts the biggest GIS conference for GIS users to meet, share ideas and discuss the latest technologies and innovations in GIS. There were more than 900 sessions, 300 technical demonstrations and 275 exhibitors at last year’s conference.

Five of the WKU department’s former GIS students work for Esri in Redlands, Calif., and in St. Louis. Kevin Cary, WKU’s GIS Center Director, also will attend this summer’s conference.

“Tiffanee is currently enrolled in my Internet GIS course and has been very impressive with her GIS skills and knowledge in conjunction with her information technology expertise,” Cary said. “She along with last year’s recipient of a GIS scholarship by the Kentucky Association of Mapping Professionals, Austin Boys, are currently working on creating a web map for identifying restaurants in real time indicating which restaurants are opened that accept Big Red Dollars. Their web map will be available on both desktop and mobile devices.”

For information about applying for an Esri student assistantship, or about GIS, WKU’s GIS programs and GIS applications in business and industry, contact Kevin Cary in WKU’s Center for GIS at (270) 745-2981 or kevin.cary@wku.edu.

Contact: Kevin Cary, (270) 745-2981.