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About 100 people from across the United States gathered at Dallas College Brookhaven Campus. They were teachers, students, librarians and industry professionals with a shared connection of geospatial education.
The free three-day professional development conference, GeoEd’26, officially kicked off May 30 as Brookhaven professor J. Scott Sires flipped waffles onto plates, with attendees trickling into the room for breakfast. He donned a white apron and tall pleated hat with the slogan “Wafflelotta resources.”
Attendees at the conference dug into both their waffles and a “wafflelotta” educational resources through presentations, hands-on workshops and group discussions meant for both educators within the geographic information system, or GIS, field and those across other disciplines who wish to integrate spatial learning into their teaching.
“When we come together to these types of conferences, and we hear what our fellow educators are doing across the country, we realize we’re not alone,” Brookhaven Campus President Madeline Burillo-Hopkins said in the opening speech for the conference. She told educators their work helps students “not just for the jobs of today, but most importantly for the opportunities and challenges of tomorrow.”
While GIS and geospatial technology use maps and data to understand relationships across space and time, conference discussions focused on a different challenge: how educators can adapt to changing technology, workforce demands and declining enrollment.
At one of the two group discussions, educators deliberated how to rethink credit and workforce GIS pathways amid declining enrollment. Sires, who facilitated the conversation, asked: “How do we impact? How do we expand? How do we solidify and strengthen? How do we save from being cut?”
Participants pointed to strategies such as integrating micro-credentials and GIS into pre-existing degrees, focusing on in-reach rather than just external outreach.
“The jobs that have GIS as their title are going to continue to diminish,” said Joseph Kerski, a geographer and GIS educator. Sires responded, “Those job titles are going to decrease while the demand for our skill sets and other disciplines is going to increase.”
In the second group discussion, educators considered the ethics of artificial intelligence within teaching. Associate directors Ann Johnson and Ken Yanow from Geospatial Technology Consortium for Community Colleges, GTC3, outlined professional ethics standards for geospatial technology users, and participants noted a wide range of institutional policies regarding AI, ranging from a lack of policy to blanket bans.
Concerns were also raised on cheating using AI, the potential quality degradation of AI if it is used to train itself, and how to teach an ever-evolving technology. There was an emphasis on proactiveness despite the difficulties building a teaching module on AI may bring.
“Teaching with geotechnology is not as popular, because it’s harder,” Kerski said. “It is harder to teach with a workforce tool that is open-ended, there's not one way to do it and there's a bit of uncertainty with the tools evolving.”
After the AI discussion on June 1, the conference came to a close. The event was offered by GTC3, formerly the GeoTech Center, which – along with its predecessor – is funded by the National Science Foundation under the Advanced Technological Education Program. In addition to hosting the annual GeoEd conferences, GTC3 develops geospatial curriculum and resources for educators and administers a variety of programs including an online training program, faculty fellowship opportunities and The National Honor Society for Geospatial Technology.
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