My current job is being terminated and while I could move on to another company, I just don’t have the enthusiasm for my field (clinical research data management) that I used to.
Part of my separation package is up to $5000 for education. I’d like to put that towards a GIS certificate program but I’m not sure how to go about it or if it’s the best use of that money.
There are quite a few certificate programs out there some of which look more comprehensive than others. A county college (Sullivan County) up by my house has a program (I think it’s in it’s infancy). Also one of the NY City Colleges (Hunter) has a certificate program, which requires a prerequisite, and the prerequisite require a prerequisite, etc. so it could be up to a year before I enter the actual program. University College at University of Denver has a certificate program that looks solid. It’s offered both on-campus and online. I’m curious about how the online program works since there’s so much lab work. Also in my area is Rutgers, which has a strong geography department and continuing education program, and there are several community colleges in NJ that have certificate programs.
Is a certificate program a viable way to get into this field? Are there programs where I’ll just be wasting my money, or is there some kind of industry standard that all programs are held to so I can at least come out of a certificate program with a good shot at finding a job?
Are there certain things in certificate programs that I need to look out for? The quicker I can do it, the better.
As an academic geography PhD student with some GIS experience, my personal feeling of the choices you mentioned is to lean toward Rutgers, since GIS without other, related parts of the discipline of geography happening around you (even if you don’t actually take a class in them, but just talk to people and learn about what they’re up to) could lead to a boring and perhaps salary-limited GIS job.
Sorry I can’t help you on your specific questions – I’m sure some doper can.
Have you looked at www.esri.com? They give courses in different locations, but they’re probably expensive, and usually specific to some software component. But they might have a few good links.
ESRI is a good place to start looking. ESRI’s GIS suite dominates the market. Here’s a page from their website with some info you will likely find helpful - although it may be a little dated. It appears to be a paper delivered at GIS conference in 2001.
Also, one of the leading GIS industry publications, GIS Monitor has a section on their website devoted to “education.” You might find more current information there. I see it mentions something called “ESRI’s Virtual Campus,” which has free & fee-based course.
I know people who got GIS jobs after finishing up bachelor’s degrees at Hunter. With the exception of people who aimed specifically to stay in academia, people ended up with jobs that relied heavily on the skills acquired in using GIS, and a lot of the ancillary geographic information they learned as part of their major didn’t matter much. A number of these folks ended up working in municipal government jobs, and I think those are likely to be the most common positions you find available when you’re done.
Why not drop a line to a few of the programs you’ve come across, and ask them where their graduates tend to land jobs? That might give you some perspective too on whether different programs have emphases that result in different job prospects.
Thanks for the advice - The ESRI site is where I found the programs I mentioned.
I took a bunch of Geography courses in college (although it was 20+ years ago) so I do have a bit of a background there. This is an interest I’ve had for quite a while but hadn’t pursued for various reasons. Now seems like a good time.
I don’t do GIS full time, but I do quite a bit with various GIS applications. I agree with some of what has been said already, but without knowing your background, it is tough to give you anything but general advice. If you already have good programming and database skills, you may find you can jump right into GIS without any certifications. The ESRI apps are moving toward geodatabases, which will be much more intuitive to anyone with database experience.
There is a huge range of jobs in the GIS field, so you have everything from people who really just use the basic ESRI GUIs to create maps, to people integrating GIS in web applications to database managers and programmers working with enormous datasets. The blooming of mobile GIS and GIS integration into other newer areas is a huge field as well, with some unique requirements.
Unless you are definitely not a computer/math/analytical type, I would strongly recommend you strengthen your general programming and database skills, as it will make you a much more desirable hire. Anyone can throw some layers together and create a pretty map, but someone who can manage and process GIS datasets effectively is a lot more in demand. I would much rather hire someone who knows only a bit about GIS but is skilled in SQL, Access, VBscript and other object oriented programming languages. Python is also becoming increasingly popular.
If you’re interested in a pretty cool free GIS viewer, check out Tatuk GIS. To see how GIS is getting a lot more portable and useful to field data collection, check out ESRI ArcPad (free trial download here). Although it is designed for PocketPC it works fine on regular PCs. There is also a lot of awesome support for open source GIS at GRASS GIS.
I’ll add a plug for ESRI, from a non-specialist POV.
I’m a writer/editor, but I worked w/ a GIS outfit from 2000 to 2002, doing a lot of document work as well as marketing, Web, etc. To effectively describe their projects, produce trade booths, proof contracts and grant proposals, and such, I needed to understand what they were doing. So they allowed me to sit in on ESRI training. I found it highly intuitive and even interesting.