Week 9 Vector Part II Student Spotlights

Did we skip a week? Yes, we did. Since students didn't create a visual output with Vector Part I and skills learned in Part I lead to Part II... decided to wait.

In Vector Part II, students completed the following objectives to create a final output the following students executed superbly.

Exercise Objectives:

• Create a simple buffer around road features
• Create a variable distance buffer around water features
• Run the buffer tool using ArcPython
• Run the overlay tool to combine or exclude multiple features
• Distinguish and convert between multipart and singlepart layers
• Find potential sites for a new campground

Alison Hayden 

Alison is a (recently retired) pro-triathlete of 16 years and a Marine Biologist/Oceanographer who has spent most of her career working in the field and mostly within the Gulf of Mexico."I am pursuing GIS in hopes of making my career as a Marine Biologist more practical." In her spare time, she loves traveling to exotic places, playing in the ocean and enjoys many types of exercise.

What we like:  Map layout - gray background makes information "pop."
More: See Alison's blog

Allen McLaughlin  

Allen is currently finishing up a double bachelors degree in Maritime Studies and Environmental Science.  Allen has an intense background in mapping, terrain modeling, and navigation he learned and used in the U.S. Army.  "I've used everything from dirt, sticks, string, hand grenade pins, bullets, parachute canvas, food, and even spit to create terrain models and field expedient maps in order to survive."  Allen plans on gaining a good working knowledge with ArcGIS in hopes to one day changing careers  to one involving the use of GIS.


What we like: Clean and easy to interpret map. Good color choices. Notes section including relevant art.

 More: See his Vector 2 blog post

 

Georgia Mass 

Georgia is new to GIS, but you wouldn't think it from the high-caliber of work she produces on a weekly basis!  When she isn't occupied with course work, Georgia stays busy as a Navy wife with 4 children.


What we like: What a fun map! Good choice of colors, nice layout and  road labels are a bonus. 
More: See Georgia's blog

 

Karen Matthews

Meet Karen: "When I'm not the single mom to my 13 yr. old daughter, I'm a GA attorney doing real estate.  The real estate closing business has really changed in the last 5 years. We have gone from office closings to home closings. In the last 5 years, I've completed over 2700 transactions, burned up 2 cars and 400k miles. I'm ready for a real change." Karen is increasing her skill set with GIS to better serve her clients and to increase her marketability. Being new to GIS,  Karen has done an exceptional job picking up on the science and software in these past few months.  I'm excited to see what she can accomplish in this program with the basics under her belt.
What we like: Nice map layout, colors are easy on the eye with the main focus of campsites made obvious with a strong color, inclusion of conservation sites a bonus. 
More: See Karen's blog.

 

Katherine Michael

Welcome back, Katherine! Katherine does exceptional work in this class and with GIS. If you aren't following her blog - please do.

What we like:  Clean map design, layout and color choices (something Katherine executes well with all of her maps). Shadow effect on legend, data frame and notes section.

More: See Katherine's' blog

Ross Wachendorf 

 Ross moved Texas to become a Geographic Analyst for Nokia (formally Navteq) a little over a year ago. "We use our own propriety software and methods of operation, which is why I am taking this coarse in order to learn industry standard GIS methods." For a bit of background, Ross started working with Nokia three years ago driving data collection vehicles throughout the U.S. collecting street level images - cool! 
What we like: Colors, hill shading, simple map layout and road labels are a bonus. 
More: See Ross' blog.