Geospatial, Remote Sensing, Certificate

(Code 140-603)

The Department of Geography and Anthropology offers a Geospatial Certificate Program with Four Options: Geospatial Certificate, Geospatial Certificate in Geographic Information Systems, Geospatial Certificate in Remote Sensing, and Geospatial Certificate in Mapping. The goals of the Certificate are:

  1. to provide students with the fundamentals and a working knowledge of the core geospatial technology skills, specifically geographic information systems, remote sensing, field data collection (GPS and surveying) and spatial thinking,
  2. to give students the option to specialize by choosing an emphasis in one of three different areas: Geographic Information Systems, Remote Sensing, or Computer Mapping, and
  3. to expose students to ethical issues involved with the use of geospatial technology.

While the Certificate is targeted primarily at professionals in the workforce who want to further their education by adding this credential onto their existing degrees, it provides current UW-Eau Claire students an opportunity to add a specific high demand set of skills and associated credentials onto their already marketable liberal arts degree from UW-Eau Claire.  For advising, see Professor Ryan Weichelt (Geography and Anthropology).

Eighteen semester credits, including:
GEOG 335Geographic Information Systems I3
GEOG 336Geospatial Field Methods3
GEOG 337Geographic Information Systems II3
GEOG 338Remote Sensing of the Environment3
GEOG 438Remote Sensing Data Analytics3
Electives, select one of the following:
LiDAR Analysis & Applications
Geographic Information Systems III

Note: Students can only receive one of the three specialized certificates, due to the potential overlap between the electives. Students cannot pursue the Geography Major and any of the Geospatial Certificates to meet graduation requirements for completing a first and second degree program. 

Program Learning Outcomes

Students completing this program will be expected to meet the following learning outcomes:

  • Demonstrate the skills necessary to perform standard geospatial tasks.
  • Demonstrate proficiency in industry standard software and using industry standard field equipment.
  • Apply the skills of preprocessing optical remotely sensed data, customizing or developing a suitable algorithm to extract biophysical and/ or sociocultural information from the data, and utilizing the information in a given geospatial problem.