Center for Spatial Studies

Werner Kuhn outlines his vision of linked science and interdisciplinary problem solving for the Center for Spatial Studies.

Don Janelle retires as the Center's Program Director and Andrea Ballatore assumes the position of Research Coordinatior.

Kitty Currier describes a very successful 4-H GIS project that engaged students with the 2013 national 4-H theme of Maps & Apps.

This issue introduces Werner Kuhn, who joins the Center as its new director in November 2013. Following six years since the founding of the Center, this issue of Vertices offers reflections on gardening in retirement (Mike Goodchild), and updates on the lives of the Center's prior visitors, sabbaticants, post-docs, and research associates.

Special attention is called to a successful International Spatial Cognition Summer Institute, hosted by the Center in August 2013 and to the Specialist Meeting on Spatial Thinking Across the College Curriculum, held in December 2012.

This issue of Vertices highlights the transition in leadership of the Center for Spatial Studies from Michael Goodchild (geographer and founder of the Center) to Mary Hegarty (psychologist and scholar of spatial cognition.

Special attention is given to two educational innovations—the Center's development of what is possibly the world's first undergraduate minor in spatial studies and the introduction of a freshman seminar on Thinking Spatially in the Arts and Sciences.

In addition, Daniel Montello sumarizes the results of an interdisciplinary conference at UC Merced on Exploring the Cave Experience from Multidisciplinary Perspectives  and Kitty Currier has described the revival of the Center's Spatial Technology Lunch discussions.

Two articles are featured. The first, by Wenwen Li, describes some of the mapping issues associated with a UC-Muliti-campus Research Program and Initiatives (MRPI) project about the metropolitan economy of the Los Angeles region. The second, by Andrea Nuernberger, focuses on knowledge assessment and spatial abilities of individuals with Alzheimer's disease, a project that she and Dan Montello inherited from the late Reginald Golledge, a pioneer in the study of human spatial behavior.

Vertices 4 reviews tools for map making in the arts and humanities at UCSB, describes summer workshops in advanced spatial analysis, and features an article by Nathaniel Royal on his experiences in documenting Guinea worm disease proceses in Niger.

The newsletter features (1) an article by Karl Grossner about the website http://teachspatial.org for discovering lesson materials for instruction in fundamental spatial concepts and (2) an essay  by Michael Goodchild on the spatially explicit and  peripatetic nature of (his) academic life.

This issue of Vertices features plans for developing a new inter-disciplinary undergraduate minor in spatial studies at UCSB. Campus-wide services for instruction and help with geographic information systems (GIS) are described.

This is the first issue of Vertices, areport on the activities of the spatial studies center known as spatial@ucsb. It features details about inauguration events centered on the theme of "Connecting our Region through GIS and Geospatial Technologies."