{"id":546182,"date":"2022-11-01T19:59:52","date_gmt":"2022-11-02T02:59:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/?post_type=arcnews&p=546182"},"modified":"2024-07-23T16:25:38","modified_gmt":"2024-07-23T23:25:38","slug":"a-self-learner-becomes-an-influential-gis-lecturer","status":"publish","type":"arcnews","link":"https:\/\/www.esri.com\/about\/newsroom\/arcnews\/a-self-learner-becomes-an-influential-gis-lecturer","title":{"rendered":"A Self-Learner Becomes an Influential GIS Lecturer"},"author":5752,"featured_media":0,"menu_order":0,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"sync_status":"","episode_type":"","audio_file":"","podmotor_file_id":"","podmotor_episode_id":"","castos_file_data":"","cover_image":"","cover_image_id":"","duration":"","filesize":"","filesize_raw":"","date_recorded":"","explicit":"","block":"","itunes_episode_number":"","itunes_title":"","itunes_season_number":"","itunes_episode_type":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[171,10372,430101],"tags":[301,157952,241,138062,179952],"arcnews_issues":[481982],"class_list":["post-546182","arcnews","type-arcnews","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-gis-hero","category-public-health","tag-community","tag-environment","tag-gis","tag-science","tag-water-quality","arcnews_issues-fall-2022","arcnews_sections-gis-people"],"acf":{"short_description":"Charlotte Smith taught herself GIS using Esri\u2019s Learn Lessons. Now, she\u2019s a GIS professor and practitioner who\u2019s making waves in the field.","pdf":{"host_remotely":false,"file":"","file_url":""},"flexible_content":[{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"For a relatively recent self-taught GIS practitioner, Dr. Charlotte Smith has had quite an impact on the GIS education community.\r\n\r\nA faculty lecturer at the University of California (UC), Berkeley, and visiting professor at the Instituto Tecnol\u00f3gico y de Estudios Superiores de Occidente (ITESO) in Guadalajara, Mexico, Smith teaches GIS courses that incorporate her background in public health and environmental health sciences in a truly integrated way."},{"acf_fc_layout":"image","image":545032,"image_position":"left","orientation":"vertical","hyperlink":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"\u201cIt\u2019s a thrill to see students come to understand the power of including location in statistical analyses, visualizing data, and telling stories,\u201d Smith said. \u201cThey\u2019re learning GIS techniques, but in the end, it\u2019s all about what they can do with the technology and how they can use the information for advocacy and making the changes they want to see.\u201d\r\n\r\nSmith hasn\u2019t always been an educator, and her forays into GIS began only about seven years ago. But she started writing GIS curricula almost as soon as she finished her first set of Learn Lessons from Esri Training and quickly immersed herself in the GIS education community.\r\n\r\n\u201cWhat drew me in and keeps me in the world of spatial analysis is the community aspect,\u201d she said. \u201cGIS is very much about community, and this community can really keep you motivated.\u201d\r\n\r\nSmith describes her career as being like one of Dutch graphic artist M. C. Escher\u2019s famous lithographs, \u201cwith the steps going in all directions and people going up and down at the same time,\u201d she said.\r\n\r\nShe majored in microbiology at the University of Michigan and stayed on as a research scientist in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology. From there, she went to Columbia University to do similar work as a molecular biologist.\r\n\r\nThen, it seems, her insatiable curiosity and limitless desire to learn took over when she got the idea to get more involved in community health work. Smith became interested in health promotion in local community settings, so she decided to get a master\u2019s degree in community health from Brooklyn College. She believes that getting more education and acquiring credentials is the best way to make a career change.\r\n\r\nSmith finished her degree, but she never ended up fully working in that field because, by happenstance, a new interest came into the picture.\r\n\r\n\u201cDuring my master\u2019s degree, I got an internship at the New York City Water Department, which turned into a job, which turned into a career in the drinking water sector,\u201d she said. \u201cThis is why I tell students, never say no to an opportunity. You don\u2019t know what you\u2019ll make of it or what it will turn into.\u201d\r\n\r\nSmith found the work fascinating, especially when it came to evaluating water quality.\r\n\r\n\u201cPeople turn on the tap, and they think that\u2019s it; it\u2019s fine,\u201d she said. \u201cBut we can see now with Flint, Michigan, and the recent water crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, that clean water should not be taken for granted. If it were easy, those problems would have been solved in a few hours. It takes technical know-how, political will, financing, regulations, and operator training to ensure good quality drinking water.\u201d\r\n\r\nSmith spent six years at the New York City Water Department before becoming director of water quality for a French company that owned and operated 35 drinking water utilities in the United States as well as others around the world. In this phase of her career, she focused on solving water quality problems and developing regulatory compliance programs. When the American subsidiary was sold, she had the choice to either join the purchasing company or not.\r\n\r\n\u201cI chose not,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd when you choose \u2018not,\u2019 you have an opportunity to do something new and better.\u201d\r\n\r\nThat\u2019s when she founded Charlotte Smith & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm that helps utilities all over the world improve water quality. For almost 30 years, she has conducted evaluations of water systems and trained water distribution system operators to find and solve water quality problems, among many other jobs.\r\n\r\nIn the middle of all this, Smith decided to go back to school to pursue her PhD. She\u2019d heard that Legionella<\/em>, the bacteria that causes Legionnaires\u2019 disease, lives inside protozoa and avoids digestion and, thus, destruction.\r\n\r\n\u201cI thought that was one of the most interesting things I\u2019d ever heard in my entire life, and I wondered what else does that,\u201d said Smith. \u201cWell, nobody was going to pay Charlotte Smith & Associates to find out.\u201d\r\n\r\nSo she obtained a Science to Achieve Results (STAR) research grant from the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and entered a PhD program at UC Berkeley to answer this question. She studied two bacteria\u2014H. pylori<\/em>, which causes stomach cancer, and E. coli<\/em>, which causes diarrheal disease\u2014to see if they can survive digestion in protozoa.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe answer is no for H. pylori<\/em> and yes for E. coli<\/em>,\u201d said Smith. \u201cI was happy because I had my answer.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Right","content":"Dr. Charlotte Smith is an associate editor for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention\u2019s (CDC) Preventing Chronic Disease<\/em> journal. One of the sections she focuses on is \u201cGIS Snapshots<\/a>,\u201d which consists of 1,000-word articles about public health projects that involve spatial exploration or analysis<\/a>. Smith and her colleagues invite people to submit articles<\/a> for publication.","snippet":""},{"acf_fc_layout":"content","content":"According to Smith, that\u2019s how a doctoral dissertation should play out.\r\n\r\n\u201cYou should have an obsession with a question,\u201d she said. \u201cIf you have that, then go back to school, take some time, answer the question, and move on with your life.\u201d\r\n\r\nSmith did move on with her life. After she answered her question, she took on an entirely new role in academia, teaching the courses Environmental Health Sciences and Drinking Water and Health at UC Berkeley in the School of Public Health. She kept running Charlotte Smith & Associates (and still does). Additionally, this new stage of her life gave her time to explore a technology she\u2019d gotten curious about: GIS.\r\n\r\n\u201cI just did a whole bunch of Esri\u2019s Learn Lessons,\u201d she said. \u201cThey\u2019re amazing. They\u2019re perfect for independent study because almost every step has an image, so you know that you\u2019re on the right track.\u201d\r\n\r\nThrough the Learn Lessons, Smith developed an appreciation of GIS in public health and environmental health sciences.\r\n\r\n\u201cGIS helps us understand the full picture,\u201d she said. \u201cAs I got more and more into mapmaking and spatial analysis, I created four GIS courses. I eventually dropped the courses I was teaching, and now it\u2019s all GIS all the time. I\u2019ve become a GIS zealot.\u201d\r\n\r\nHer students have used GIS to map the locations of drinking fountains throughout Berkeley to help the city promote the consumption of water rather than sugary beverages. The students have employed ArcGIS Survey123 to gather data about campus restrooms to help ensure that the university has accessible and gender-inclusive bathrooms. They\u2019ve used Survey123 to collect quantitative and qualitative data on access to safe drinking water in Guadalajara and in rural communities on Lake Chapala, Mexico. Smith teaches her students how to use Esri technology, such as ArcGIS Online, ArcGIS Dashboards, and ArcGIS StoryMaps, as well as how to conduct geospatial analysis.\r\n\r\n\u201cI\u2019m amazed at what these students can create in such a short amount of time,\u201d Smith said, referring to her eight-week and semester-long courses.\r\n\r\nWhile Smith has been teaching GIS to undergraduate and graduate students for about five years, she had never taken a formal university course in GIS until last year. Ever the lifelong learner, she enrolled in Johns Hopkins University\u2019s Master of Applied Science in Spatial Analysis for Public Health program.\r\n\r\n\u201cBecause I had never taken a GIS course, I had no role models for the pedagogy,\u201d she said. \u201cThe way I\u2019ve been teaching GIS is based on the way I\u2019ve taught other courses. But I questioned whether that\u2019s the best way to teach GIS.\u201d\r\n\r\nLearning from the Johns Hopkins faculty and students, Smith says she\u2019s not only becoming a better professor by participating in the program, but she\u2019s also learning to approach projects in different ways.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe GIS community is full of people who are willing to share, communicate, and support one another,\u201d said Smith. \u201cAs a person with a neurodegenerative disease and limited mobility, being part of the GIS community sustains me.\u201d"},{"acf_fc_layout":"sidebar","layout":"standard","image_reference":null,"image_reference_figure":"","spotlight_image":null,"section_title":"","spotlight_name":"","position":"Center","content":"Read other articles in the GIS Heroes<\/a> series.","snippet":""}],"references":null},"yoast_head":"\nA Self-Learner Becomes an Influential GIS Lecturer | ArcNews | Fall 2022<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Charlotte Smith taught herself GIS using Esri\u2019s Learn Lessons. 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