Happy GIS Day! We’re halfway through Geography Awareness Week, and today we have our in-person event to celebrate the use of GIS on campus in The Catalyst (Room 199) of Parks Library. We have a lineup of interesting speakers. Program representatives will provide information about the GIS minor and GIS certificate programs available at Iowa State University. This is also a great opportunity to connect with other GIS users while enjoying refreshments. Don’t forget to bring your best map to enter in the Mapping Masterminds competition and to prepare for our fun GIS Day quiz, both of which have prizes for the winning entries. Additionally, you can take home some GIS Day buttons, notebooks, and trading cards as mementos. Below is the GIS Day agenda. For more details, visit our 2025 GIS Day website.
GIS Day 2025
9:00 – 9:30
Social time and mingling
9:30 – 9:35
Welcome and Introduction
9:35 – 9:40
GIS Minor Information
9:40 – 10:05
Tim Sklenar, Sustainable Agriculture and Agriculture and Biosytems Engineering
“Mapping Areas of Potential Ephemeral Gully Formation Using Terrain Indexes”
10:10 – 10:35
Rahul Bharadwaj Ravishankar, Operations Research and Industrial Engineering
“Modeling Wildfire Risk: Integrating GIS and Spatio-Temporal Analytics”
10:40 – 11:25
GIS Professional Panel: Shawn Blaesing – Maintenance GIS Coordinator, Iowa DOT, Greg Jameson – GIS Analyst, City of Grimes, Louise Jennings – Senior GIS Analyst, HNTB Corporation
11:25 -11:30
GIS Graduate Certificate Information
11:35 – 12:00
Mariana Castro Azpíroz, Creative Writing and the Environment, English Department
“Braiding Climate Data, Action, and Art into Narratives of Resilience with ArcGIS StoryMaps”
12:00 – 12:15
Closing, awarding of Mapping Masterminds contest prizes, and quiz prizes.
We hope to see you there!
