Latest Contributions by JosephKerski

I recently heard some memorable words which stated that "wise people have recognized the importance of what it is like to not know".  This is different from the wisdom of "Socratic ignorance" but may be even more applicable to the use of GIS in education.  What it is like to not know in my view means that we as GIS educators understand the challenges that exist in embracing a new set of tools and methods that the use of geotechnologies entails in teaching and learning. In other words, "we've been there!" and can empathize. I think this empathy is part of the reason why the online and face-to-face professional development workshops and courses (such as the T3G institute) have been so positively received by the education community over the years.  Because the instructors have "been there", as instructors, we approach each of these professional development events with sensitivity and humility.  As leaders of these institutes, we very purposefully model what we are teaching--we know what it is like to not know about GIS. We understand what it is like to be immersed in new technology with its associated new terms and new tools.  We know what it is like to be simultaneously grappling with new ways of thinking, teaching, and learning.   I think back to the first time I took an ArcGIS Server course where all of the other students were systems administrators, who regularly used terms I only had vague notions of.  I am reminded on a daily basis how much I still have to learn about GIS, despite having used it since 1984.  It's very humbling to be taught new skills by someone who, for example, has "only" been using GIS for a few years. But veteran and new GIS educators alike have much to learn from each other. GIS has become much easier to use over the past 25 years, though challenges remain.  However, for the good of the planet and for the good of our students, I believe that the challenges are worth grappling with.  And for those of us who have instructor roles--remember what it was like to not know! Educators discussing their use of GIS in education. ... View more

ArcGIS Earth, which arrived earlier this year, is a free, powerful tool to visualize the Earth in 3D.  ArcGIS Earth runs via a program that you install on your computer (at the present time, Windows-only) and streams spatial data over the web.  You can add data that you or your students create, or data that local, regional, national, and international organizations have created on a wide variety of themes.  These themes include natural hazards, demographics, hydrography, ecoregions, energy, health, and much more.  Indeed, because ArcGIS Earth can access data in the ArcGIS Online cloud, the number of layers available are vast, and expanding daily.  Educators and students can also visualize data collected and stored on their own computers.  Let’s explore five activities that you can quickly and easily use in the classroom, at a wide variety of educational levels and disciplines. 1.  Study your community or region, or others around the world, using satellite imagery.  Not long ago, my colleague in geography gave me a tour of Yangmingshan National Park in Taiwan, which contains sulfur deposits, fumaroles, venomous snakes, and at least 20 volcanoes.  I can use ArcGIS Earth to teach about the physical geography of the park (shown in part, below). Yangmingshan National Volcanoes Park, Taiwan in ArcGIS Earth. 2.  Teach about watersheds.  In the example below, I added the World Hydro Reference overlay to ArcGIS Earth, changed the base map to a topographic base map, and highlighted the boundary of a watershed in western Colorado.  Using this technique, you can teach students the relationship between watersheds, river drainage, and topography. Examining watersheds in ArcGIS Earth. 3.  Investigate population density and world demographics.  In the example below, I added the world population density layer.  I can then add demographic data by country, location of major world cities, and other map layers to teach about world settlement patterns and why these patterns are important. Population density visualized in ArcGIS Earth. 4.   Teach about the shape and size of the Earth.  Using the measurement tool in the example below, you can teach about Great Circle routes and much more about distances and the physical geography of the Earth. Showing measurement and the Great Circle route in ArcGIS Earth. 5.  Study real-time data.  In the example below, I am using the oceans base map and earthquakes from the last 90 days to study the relationship between tectonic activity and the ocean trench northeast of New Zealand. Earthquakes northeast of New Zealand visualized in ArcGIS Earth. Much more can be done, but I hope that these examples help you think about how you might use ArcGIS Earth in your own instruction or research. ... View more

Dr Damian Gessler of Semantic Options recently gave a keynote address in which he stated, "transformational change is enabled as past technologies simplify."  Immediately, I thought of the many presentations and papers where a few of my colleagues and I have applied Everett Rogers' diffusion of innovations theory to GIS in education. Rogers theory focuses on how innovations are adopted, at first by innovators and then by early adopters.  Rogers says that for real change to occur with any technology, the early majority of users, representing one standard deviation below the mean, will need to adopt the technology.   Some of us are arguing that with the advent of web based GIS and the resulting lowering of technological and learning barriers, we are beginning to see an "early majority" of educators using GIS in their instruction. Gessler's point perfectly applies to the use of GIS in education:  First, GIS has 50-year roots, so while one can argue that it is changing more rapidly now than ever before, it qualifies as a "past technology" as identified by Gessler.  Its methods and models have been tested, vetted, and refined.  Second, it has simplified in many ways--through the advent of the graphical user interface around 2000, web based services through the Geography Network of the early 2000s and on through the modern ArcGIS Online platform, and its ability to incorporate real-time data, multimedia (via story maps and other mapping applications), and field data through crowdsourcing and other methods.  As it has become easier to use, it has simultaneously become more powerful. These two simultaneous trends are attracting people in a widening diversity of disciplines to the use of GIS.  As they do, decisions are increasingly made using the geographic perspective, and transformational change is enabled, to put it in Dr Gessler's words.  In the classroom at the primary, secondary, and university levels in formal and in informal settings, the use of the technologies and methods are beginning to effect transformational change in how skills, content knowledge, and perspectives are taught and learned. Do you agree that we are seeing a transformational change with regard to the use of GIS in education?  What do you recommend that we as the community need to do in order to further encourage and hasten these developments? Educators learning how to implement field methods and GIS into their curricula. ... View more

ArcGIS Earth, which arrived earlier this year, is a free, powerful tool to visualize the Earth in 3D.  ArcGIS Earth runs via a program that you install on your computer (at the present time, Windows-only) and streams spatial data over the web.  You can add data that you or your students create, or data that local, regional, national, and international organizations have created on a wide variety of themes.  These themes include natural hazards, demographics, hydrography, ecoregions, energy, health, and much more.  Indeed, because ArcGIS Earth can access data in the ArcGIS Online cloud, the number of layers available are vast, and expanding daily.  Educators and students can also visualize data collected and stored on their own computers.  Let's explore five activities that you can quickly and easily use in the classroom, at a wide variety of educational levels and disciplines. 1.  Study your community or region, or others around the world, using satellite imagery.  Not long ago, my colleague in geography gave me a tour of Yangmingshan National Park in Taiwan, which contains sulfur deposits, fumaroles, venomous snakes, and at least 20 volcanoes.  I can use ArcGIS Earth to teach about the physical geography of the park (shown in part, below). Yangmingshan National Volcanoes Park, Taiwan in ArcGIS Earth. 2.  Teach about watersheds.  In the example below, I added the World Hydro Reference overlay to ArcGIS Earth, changed the base map to a topographic base map, and highlighted the boundary of a watershed in western Colorado.  Using this technique, you can teach students the relationship between watersheds, river drainage, and topography. Examining watersheds in ArcGIS Earth. 3.  Investigate population density and world demographics.  In the example below, I added the world population density layer.  I can then add demographic data by country, location of major world cities, and other map layers to teach about world settlement patterns and why these patterns are important. Population density visualized in ArcGIS Earth. 4.   Teach about the shape and size of the Earth.  Using the measurement tool in the example below, you can teach about Great Circle routes and much more about distances and the physical geography of the Earth. Showing measurement and the Great Circle route in ArcGIS Earth. 5.  Study real-time data.  In the example below, I am using the oceans base map and earthquakes from the last 90 days to study the relationship between tectonic activity and the ocean trench northeast of New Zealand. Earthquakes northeast of New Zealand visualized in ArcGIS Earth. Much more can be done, but I hope that these examples help you think about how you might use ArcGIS Earth in your own instruction or research. ... View more

Many of us attended graduation ceremonies this month; some of us have our own students graduating.  Amid these joyful events, I wanted to share several new resources about careers in GIS that are now available that I believe will be useful to students, educators, career counselors, and others. First, the folks at the career and employment resource, The Muse, created a fascinating node on Esri with interviews of young people working here! I created several new videos on my YouTube channel under "Career" such as a new series of 4 “career pathways in geotechnologies” videos, beginning here.  I also created a "Top 5 skills you need to be successful in GIS" series beginning here, a Geographer is a Green job video, and others. The career development zone on the Esri EdCommunity page includes Esri career posters, a summary of the blog essays we have written on careers, links to industries that use GIS, some GIS heroes, videos of those who use GIS on the job as firefighter, city manager, and in other fields, and much more. I also tell students to frequently check the job openings on www.geosearch.com, gisjobs.org, and our own Esri openings on http://www.esri.com/careers as they think about their future. Esri also maintains an interesting  student opportunity page and a jobs zone on GeoNet is useful too.  Interested in talking with our staff about career opportunities?   See this page for upcoming events where our university recruitment team will be.  Feel free to contact the university recruitment folks on university @ esri.com.  Read this blog and the Esri Higher Education Facebook community to find out where the education outreach team will be speaking in the near future. Processing and analyzing topographic data on the job. ... View more

What are the best small towns in the USA?  To investigate these towns and their spatial distribution, I created a Story Map of the Top 100 Best Small Towns in the USA according to Livability.com.  I created it in part to show how easy it is to create a story map based on a news feature, current event, or something interesting that has a location component.  I also wanted to demonstrate a different method of creating a story map than those I have described in the past. After deciding that the map tour story map was the type I wanted, I downloaded the map tour CSV template, and then once I populated the template with the Livability 100 towns data, I imported the CSV using the map tour app: Downloading and importing a CSV file to build a story map. The CSV populated the Map Tour captions from my spreadsheet.  If you would like to see what the CSV looks like, click here.  After uploading the CSV, I did make some small aesthetic updates in the story map app, but my work was essentially done. My resulting story map looks like this, below - click on the map to see it live: The 100 Best Small Towns according to Livability as a Story Map. My underlying ArcGIS Online map in "My Content" looks like this, below.  Later, I can add layers to this map that will be reflected in the story map, such as median age, median income, or other variables. The 100 Best Small Towns according to Livability - ArcGIS Online Map. Another reason I created this map is that it provides a number of teachable moments.  In creating the story map, I made sure I practiced what I am always preaching to students: Cite your sources, including your photographs. Furthermore, in teaching with the web, we as educators frequently tell students to check the methodology used.  Unlike some other sites that "rank" things but the "ranking" may represent only the opinion of the person writing the article rather than any sort of rigorous or scientific method, Livability clearly explains how they developed their ranking.  They work with the Martin Prosperity Institute, examining more than 40 data points for more than 12,000 towns with populations between 1,000 and 20,000: "These scores were weighted based on an exclusive survey conducted for Livability by the leading global market research firm, Ipsos Public Affairs. These cities and towns allow for the tight-knit communities key to small-town living coupled with the amenities you’d expect in larger cities," says Livability.  They used economic, health, housing, social and civic capital, education, amenities, demographics, and infrastructure as eight categories of "livability".  They used a national survey so that it is in part based on what people most value in communities, and also added some thoughtful considerations of their own.  They followed four guiding principles:  Access, affordability, choice, and utilization, and used Esri's lifestyle variables that allowed them to see which residents were making the most of opportunities in their cities. Despite these well-documented and rigorous measures, you could use the map and the above discussion to ask the students questions such as:   "What variables are missing?  Several communities in western Washington and Oregon are on the map:  Are rainy winters a problem for you?  Or the cold winters that would be experienced in Bemidji, Houghton, or Bar Harbor? Or the occasional hurricane in St Augustine?  How important is being near to or far from a metropolitan area or a major airport to you?  Are there regions of the USA that are under-represented by the "100 best" towns, or over-represented?  What would your list of, say, 100, or 10 best, be?  Make a story map of your list! What would your list of 10 best in your own state be, and why?  What about a list of 10 best outside the USA?" Blog post updated 3 January 2018.  ... View more

Geography summer camp?   I will be offering an exciting 5-week online course beginning 25 May - hope to see you online or ... please tell a colleague! Geography Summer Camp 2016: Online 5-Week Geography Course | GIS Education Community --Joseph Kerski ... View more

Folks: I wrote about some of the ways you can share data through story maps, here: Sharing Data through Story Maps | GIS Education Community --Joseph Kerski ... View more

Many methods of sharing mapped data are now available and easy to use. Using these methods can foster critical and spatial thinking by engaging the ArcGIS platform.  We have written about a variety of ways to share mapped data in this blog.  One method is to create a spreadsheet, publish it to ArcGIS Online, and making it editable in the field to enable your students to do citizen science-based mapping.  Another idea we wrote about is to crowdsource your photographs that can be used in multimedia maps.  We have also written about the many ways that you and your students can map their field data.  With increasing interest in story maps, how can data from more than one student be shown in a story map? Several methods exist for educators and students to create data in the field or in the classroom and map it via a story map, with more on the way.  One way is to create a map in ArcGIS Online that includes an editable feature service, as shown in this example where I invite educators to map tree species on their campuses.  You can then create a story map, such as the one shown below.  Here, I chose the "basic story map" when I shared my map to a web mapping application.  The story map updates each time tree data is added.  Data can be added in the field using the Collector for ArcGIS app if the map has been shared with a group and the user has been invited to that group.  Data can also be added via a web browser on a laptop or tablet computer, and if the map has been shared publicly, with no log in required. While you cannot have multiple editors work on a single story map, one method for instruction is to designate a person in your class whose ArcGIS Online account keeps the "master" story map.  Other students develop content in ArcGIS Desktop, Pro, or Online that they upload and share that content with their peers within their Group in ArcGIS Online.  Then, the person responsible for the master map searches for that content and adds it to their ArcGIS Online map.   The story map, as in the example I show below, automatically updates because it is pointing to the original editable map. I mentioned above that "more methods are on the way."  These include the upcoming crowdsourcing story map application, so keep an eye on this blog for further updates. Crowdsourced Tree Mapping Project in a Story Map. ... View more

At the recent annual meeting of the American Association of Geographers, several of us had a conversation focused on running GeoTech Clubs--clubs focused on geotechnologies, mapping, fieldwork, and related topics, at schools.  Over the past 15 years, I have had the opportunity to run these types of clubs in elementary, middle, and high schools, and have participated in career panel presentations sponsored by geography, environmental, and GIS clubs at universities as well. With the launch of the GeoMentors program last year, I think the time has come to revisit this topic.  As an update to what I wrote a few years ago with a video I created at the same time, I would like to invite the community to discuss your experiences below with the club approach to promoting GIS at educational institutions. Flyer promoting a GeoTech Club at a school. An after-school club such as GeoTech provides an excellent way for students to engage in tools and experiences.  A club environment provides the freedom to experiment with different approaches and techniques.  I encourage anyone thinking of starting and running a club to make the activities fun and engaging.  I distribute maps, satellite images, and other mapping related items.  Choose a wide variety of topics and scales, including current events and relevant 21st Century topics such as energy, water, population change, natural hazards, open space trails, local businesses, weather, and the environment using GIS. Bring in real job ads requiring GIS skills in the local area and discuss career decisions and work environments.  Make sure the club gets students out into the field, even if the field is just the school campus, gathering data about litter, trees and shrubs, social zones, cell phone reception, and infrastructure using GPS receivers and smartphone apps.  Map your field collected data in ArcGIS Online. Ask students what they are interested in examining.   After the students get familiar with some mapping tools, let the students pursue an independent project of their own choosing.  One student I had in a GeoTech Club created an ArcGIS Online map with data points and photographs to support the field trip the Earth Science teacher was conducting. Another made a map-based project comparing all of the local lunch spots that students in his school frequented. Another made a map with all of the major league baseball stadiums complete with team logos used as point symbols. Since there is so much competition for students’ time after school, make sure that you not only advertise the club via school newsletters, announcements, and web sites, but also (1) Encourage the students in the club to tell and bring their friends, (2)  Ensure that the club is well supported by the school’s teachers and administrators, and (3) Build connections between what you are doing in the club to the school’s focus areas. Career academies are an important part of the high school housing the GeoTech Club I facilitated most recently.  The themes of geotechnologies, inquiry, and critical thinking have become an important part of the school’s STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) academy and soon in their Business and Global Studies academy.  The STEM academy’s pathway on computer technology and its "Earth, Energy, and the Environment” theme were particularly well aligned with the GeoTech Club. I would also like to see examples where students are directing the activities of their own club.  A GeoTech Club is also an excellent way for you to bring in other geomentors in your community to give presentations and lead activities. If you are already running a GeoTech Club at a school, what activities do you include in it?  If you are not running such a club, I encourage you to look into it, or encourage others to do so. ... View more

Thanks to collaborative work between Esri and Microsoft, ArcGIS Online maps and web mapping applications can now be embedded into Microsoft Sway presentations.  Microsoft Sway is a tool by which you can easily create compelling and multimedia-rich presentations that are stored online and thus can be easily shared and viewed on any device. It can also be used to create newsletters, reports, and personal stories.  The ability to embed ArcGIS Online maps and web mapping applications, such as storymaps, into Sway presentations enables a seamless, flowing presentation that takes advantages of the interactivity of ArcGIS Online and the capabilities that Sway offers. For example, I recently gave a presentation at the AAG annual meeting entitled Communicating Geography to the General Public.  When you open this presentation, you will see that it includes photographs, video, and text.  But scroll down in the presentation for something even better:  You will see several live web maps:  An Open Street Map in ArcGIS Online that begins with Europe, a storymap I created for the University of Denver campus, a crowdsourced map of 2,000 points collected in the field by educators using the Collector for ArcGIS app, and a proposed trail in Osceola, Iowa.  I was able to include these live web maps and apps using the embed code capabilities of Sway. Other benefits of include:  I can easily copy a Sway to another file and edit that for a different presentation or workshop, and thus do not need to completely start over.  Furthermore, at the conference I could use any computer that happened to be at the podium to present my content.  I could easily direct the audience to view and even interact with the presentation and its live web maps as I was giving the presentation, or during the following week as they returned to their workplace. The capability of embedding live content from ArcGIS Online represents another example in the flexibility of the ArcGIS platform to be incorporated into a growing number of tools to meet a growing number of needs--in this case, as a powerful communication tool. Embedding ArcGIS Online maps and storymaps into Microsoft Sway. ... View more

I recently had the opportunity to advise, create, and teach a mini-course to support an NSF-funded project aimed at university students who are underrepresented in STEM, fieldwork, and geotechnologies.  This mini-course was in conjunction with Colorado State University, the National Park Service, and the national BioBlitz 2016 initiative. As I describe in the workshop syllabus, the goals in my portion of the project were to help the university student participants to:  (1) Learn what GIS and spatial analysis are and why they matter to society and why they are relevant to this project;  (2) Learn how to upload, symbolize, and classify their field-collected data and other data into a web based mapping platform (ArcGIS Online);  (3) Learn how to spatially analyze their own field-collected data and other data in ArcGIS Online; and – (4) Learn how to create presentations and web mapping applications, including multimedia maps and storymaps, to communicate the results of their research. After watching Penn State's Geospatial Revolution Trailer and my Why Get Excited about Web Mapping video, we discussed why GIS is a key part of research, education, and society in the 21st Century.  We then worked with my vegetation data that I collected on vegetation types collected with iNaturalist mobile smartphone app and the data that the students had collected during that same week at Bandelier National Monument in New Mexico.  We then brought the data into ArcGIS Online, displayed the data by setting styles and popup properties for the insect, plant, and animal species they had documented, created heat maps, walk- and drive-time areas, calculated routes to re-visit the sample points, and created maps showing hot spots.   They used the trace downstream tool, created riparian zone buffers around streams, and calculated the number of observations in the riparian zones. We also worked with some test soil pH data from North Dakota into ArcGIS Online with some additional tools.  We mapped elements in the soil (such as Zn, Pb, K, Ph), created map notes, summarized points within specific parameters, and added statistics such as lead--parts per million.  We created a new hosted feature layer from the original CSV file so that we could filter the data, selecting points, for example, where the lead parts per million was at least 200.   We then calculated a Hot Spot analysis and interpolated a surface of pH values based on that attribute. Once the analysis was finished, we created web mapping applications, starting with my web maps, apps, and story maps presentation and creating multimedia map notes from my own New Mexico fieldwork at 36, -106 and 35, -106 and 34, -106, but we spent most of our time together in hands-on mode building the storymaps based on their own fieldwork.   We focused on creating a Map Tour Storymap, a Side Accordion storymap, and a Map Journal storymap.  We then discussed and compared these multimedia maps, and discussed skills learned and how and when to apply them in this BioBlitz project and beyond. The tools and data within ArcGIS Online supported and complemented the project very nicely, and some of these same techniques can be used by the thousands of people who are expected to participate in the national BioBlitz 2016 initiative in a few months.  I look forward to seeing the students' final projects. How might you and your students be able to map your own field-collected data using these tools and techniques? Some of the field data collected in iNaturalist mapped in ArcGIS Online. Some of the university student participants and instructors of the BioBlitz workshop at Colorado State University.  The students represented at least 10 universities in the USA and internationally. ... View more

Folks:  The following MOOC is free, 4 weeks long, is built on the Geospatial Technology Competency Model, and offers a great set of hands-on activities, readings, and discussions.  I am on the instructional team and I wanted to let you know about it so that you can consider participating and tell others about it. --Joseph Kerski Elmhurst College: Skills for the Digital Earth Course Description Ever stop to think about how important location is when using your smart phone? This educational MOOC begins with an elementary explanation of how society uses location in a myriad of disciplines. Geography, or rather, "where?" is important to all of us from various perspectives. Within this MOOC, participants will learn what location technologies are used for, how the discipline developed and learn by doing via a series of scaffolded practical exercises. Online spatial software will be employed for any device using a browser which takes users through exercises and real world examples. It is appropriate for those with no prior experience with geographic information systems (GIS) software all the way to advanced users. In this course, participants will: Understand basic geographic concepts and be exposed to the geospatial workforce. Identify skills associated with the Geospatial Technology Competency Model (GTCM). Use geospatial tools and technology and apply some business fundamentals using GIS. Recognize employment opportunities in the geospatial industry. Use and interpret spatial data and data sources. Gain core geospatial abilities which are consistent with those of someone working in the geospatial industry. ... View more

I have created a “Famous Boots of Wimberley, Texas” story map, and I did so for four reasons:  First, I wanted to show educators and the general public how to integrate art, history, science, technology, geography, and GIS.  My colleagues and I receive frequent inquiries from people asking how to integrate art into STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) educational programs, and Wimberley's giant boots are a good illustration of this integration.  This went beyond art and STEM, though, as it incorporates history and geography as well.  Second, I wanted to test the capabilities of the side accordion story map configurable app.  This app is an easy and compelling way to tell a story.  With the new ArcGIS story maps, I could have used the new tab capabilities as another option.  Third, I wanted to demonstrate that every community has a story, and story maps are a visually compelling, easy-to-create way of telling that story.  When I visited the town for the first time after a series of presentations I gave at the geography department of nearby Texas State University, I learned about the boot project from my town walkabout.  It was so interesting to me that I began collecting information, photographs, and video, and a short time later, I had created the story map that integrates all of these types of multimedia.  The boot project brought together local artists, the Chamber of Commerce, local businesses, and the entire community, and serves as a source of city pride as well as a tourist attraction.  Fourth, it is my hope that my brief story map (see my video) can in some small way inspire people in another location to think creatively about a place-based arts project that can help build pride in their own community. If I can do this for a community that I had just discovered, how much more can you and your students tell a story of a topic on which you conduct more in-depth research and may even have local knowledge about! Cowboy Boots of Wimberley Texas story map. ... View more

My colleague David Neils is one of my favorite mentors.  David runs the International Telementor Program and is very active in connecting students and faculty at all levels with industry professionals for the goal of fostering workforce skills development.  He is also one of the greatest wildlife photographers and advocates for outdoor education that I've ever known. He recently summarized some of the gems he is regularly sharing in his presentations and workshops, and graciously agreed to allow me to post this for the greater community: 1. Follow up quickly and professionally on all communication with industry professionals. Dead air is common today from students. Avoid it like the plague. 2. Look for ways to make a difference RIGHT NOW for these professionals and others who you connect with. Learn more about the industry WHILE MAKING A DIFFERENCE. 3. Be sure you set the bar at or above industry expectations for all of your student work and work outside of school. Don't let your instructors set the bar of quality any more. They won't set it high enough for you to be competitive. Grade inflation is rampant. Don't be a casualty. Have all of your work reviewed by industry. You'll find you are capable of producing stellar work and it will open up doors. 4. Make sure your education plan ALWAYS supersedes the institutional requirements of any institution you're at. Your institution is simply a catalyst for you to blow the doors off with your interests, natural abilities, and energy. To be successful you must view your school as just one small part of your education experience, goals, and objectives. 5. Pay it forward. Help fellow students learn the ropes. Reach back into a local high school or middle school and share with students the powerful journey you're on. Few things in life will produce more joy. 6. Develop win-win relationships with successful alumni from the program you're currently in. Dig in and learn all you can about these alumni before you connect. Determine why they've been successful. Figure out what keeps them up at night professionally, and figure out a way to help solve their challenges. Nothing opens up doors faster, nothing. Only one out of a million college students thinks this way. You'll definitely stand out. 7. When you connect with a successful professional, use this approach: 1. Be humble, transparent, appreciative and professional in all of your communication. 2. Let the professional know you still have a lot to learn but while you're learning you want to help. 3. Identify an area of mutual interest (you've done your homework) that you'd like to tackle and note the time frame, etc. 4. Be clear regarding what you're asking of the professional and the time frame involved. 5. Note how you're going to wrap things up and share the results. 6. Thank the professional in a heartfelt, professional way. (Handwritten thank you cards have the greatest impact).Note from Joseph Kerski:  What are you reactions to the above?  I look forward to hearing your comments below. ------------------------------- Ways to contact David:www.telementor.orgwww.linkedin.com/in/davidbneilswww.offthepavement.org Want to be a mentor in the fields of STEM, geography, and GIS?  Or find a mentor for your school or program? One way to do so is via the GeoMentor program. David Neils setting up one of his wildlife webcams in Colorado. ... View more