Ed.D. -- Existing Courses and Articulation Issues The program should be geography-heavy for people entering with backgrounds in educational administration and assessment or with backgrounds in information technology, computer programming, and engineering. For students with strong backgrounds in geography that emphasize the geospatial technologies and techniques, then the program should have them develop understanding of paedagogical theory, education administration/leadership, workforce development and training, and assessment, as well as computer programming and database design and querying. It should be geography-centered and operated by the two geography departments but interdisciplinary to ensure an appropriate balance for people coming in from a variety of professional backgrounds. That said, there are issues of logistical, operational, and curricular articulation to be worked out, should the departments go forward. Articulation Issues One area of logistical complication is that CSULB is on a semester system and UCLA is on a quarter system, thus making it more than usually difficult to take classes on both campuses simultaneously. One possible solution is having Ed.D. students alternate yearly between the campuses. An area of operational and curricular complication is the disparity in level at which particular systematic courses are offered. At CSULB, such subjects as biogeography, climatology, and economic geography are 400 level courses, courses corresponding with advanced upper division work. UCLA does not differentiate basic upper-division (junior-level courses) from advanced upper-division courses (senior-level courses), counting them all as 100-level courses (or, in the case of basic biogeography, at the lower division level). At CSULB, graduate students taking these courses are required to do extra work in them, befitting the competitive edge they (presumably) have over their undergraduate colleagues. So, how would, say, UCLA's climatology course (104) articulate with CSULB's (444)? Another operational and curricular complication is the difference in the two departments' master's degree programs. CSULB's is more rigorous in requiring a larger unit load (30 semester units, including the required 6 units of thesis) versus 36 quarter units (24 semester units) in the UCLA program; UCLA's is more rigorous in demanding that all but 8 quarter units must be at the graduate level (200-level). Since a student may include up to 8 quarter units of 500-level (thesis preparation) coursework in their course load but not towards their minimum graduate course load, it is rare that any undergraduate courses can ever count towards the master's degree at UCLA. Partly this may reflect quirks of institutional history, through which CSULB (and other CSU campuses) have traditionally accepted up to 12 semester units of certain approved undergraduate courses with the proviso that the graduate students in them must carry more work and responsibility in such courses. Since such courses at CSULB have explicit provisions for increased graduate student workload, should they count in the joint Ed.D. program and identical courses at UCLA not count?!? Maybe this could be taken care of by having students start out at CSULB and taking any such courses in their first year. Then, in the second year, they'd go to UCLA and participate in 200-level courses there (assuming they are properly prepared to meet those courses' pre-requisites). In the third year, they could return to CSULB to do any remaining coursework and start on their culminating projects. This sort of cohort system would also take care of the mismatch between the quarter and semester unit systems, too. One last complication has to do with the nature of the Ed.D. degree itself. It is a professional degree, not a research degree, rather more like the J.D. or M.D. than a Ph.D.: It typically requires considerably more coursework than a Ph.D. program. The most common unit load is approximately 60 units beyond the master's degree, and it is typical for students to take courses for three years (full-time) or four years+ (part-time). They will be in our classes and seminars a lot longer than the master's or Ph.D. student. On the other hand, the dissertation is typically a smaller project, somewhere between a master's thesis and a Ph.D. dissertation. The point of the degree is not so much to produce people capable of significant original contribution to the discipline as it is to produce people who can accumulate, evaluate, and apply research findings from the literature to solve practical, concrete problems in their working milieux. In some ways, this makes the work of the advisory committees less demanding than the Ph.D. dissertation. Courses in the Two Departments of Special Relevance Geography, the basic source and context of the geospatial techniques and technologies CSULB 596 (Literature and history of geographic thought) -- 3 sem units UCLA 295 (Seminar: Geographic thought) -- 4 qrtr units UCLA 298A (Philosophical issues in geographical inquiry) -- 4 qrtr units UCLA 298B (History of Modern Geography) -- 4 qrtr units CSULB 696 (Research models in geography) -- 3 sem units CSULB upper-division and graduate systematics courses -- 3 sem units UCLA upper-division and graduate systematics courses -- 4 qrtr units History of geospatial techniques and technologies CSULB 381 (Maps and civilization) -- 3 sem units UCLA 166 (Images of Earth: The world from above) -- 4 qrtr units GIS CSULB 585 (GIS) -- 3 sem units CSULB 587 A (Environmental applications of GIS) -- 4 sem units CSULB 587 B (Urban and economic applications of GIS) -- 4 sem units CSULB 588 (Advanced GIS) -- 3 sem units CSULB 481 (GIScience for the natural sciences) -- 4 sem units CSULB 680 (Seminar in geospatial technologies) -- 3 sem units UCLA 168 (Introduction to GIS) -- 4 qrtr units UCLA 170 (Advanced GIS) -- 4 qrtr units UCLA 268 (Advanced projects in GIS/remote sensing) - -4 qrtr units Remote sensing CSULB 473 (Remote sensing) -- 3 sem units CSULB 474 (Digital image processing) -- 3 sem units CSULB 575 A (Remote sensing applications: NASA) -- 3 sem units CSULB 575 B (Remote sensing applications: Urban environments) -- 3 sem units CSULB C (Remote sensing applications: Arid lands) -- 3 sem units CSULB 680 (Seminar in geospatial technologies) -- 3 sem units UCLA 169 (Satellite remote sensing and imaging geographic information systems) -- 4 qrtr units UCLA 172 (Advanced remote sensing and data processing) -- 4 qrtr units UCLA 269 (Remote sensing of environment) -- 4 qrtr units Cartography, visualization, and communication CSULB 482 (Principles of thematic map design) -- 3 qrtr units CSULB 584 (Advanced concepts in presentation cartography) -- 3 qrtr units CSULB 680 (Seminar in geospatial technologies) -- 3 sem units UCLA 167 (Cartography) -- 4 qrtr units Statistics and spatial statistics CSULB 400 (Geographical analysis: multivariate statistics) -- 3 sem units UCLA M171 (Introduction to spatial statistics) -- 4 qrtr units UCLA M272 (Spatial statistics) -- 4 qrtr units UCLA 298C (Statistical methods for geographical research) -- 4 qrtr units Geographical information beyond the GIS Field methods (586; UCLA 100A, 101A, 105A, 163, 260, 262) Qualitative methods (CSULB 502) Courses in Other Disciplines -- that need to be identified and incorporated after consultation with the relevant departments (e.g., CSULB departments of Liberal Studies, Science Education, Computer Science; UCLA departments of Education and of Information Studies) Database structure and programming Needs assessment and system design/implementation Curriculum design, delivery, and outcomes assessment (CSULB EDP 400, 520, 596, 672) K-12 Community college Private sector Government agencies Non-government organizations Geospatial technologies and society Ethics Diversity of workforce (EDP 432, 548) Community building and advocacy applications Web delivery Openness and security issues Internship (e.g., NASA Summer Program) (CSULB 492; UCLA 199i) Dissertation -- given the practical nature of the Ed.D. degree, perhaps two separate components might be appropriate as culminating experiences, along the lines of a thesis and a project in those master's programs that differentiate the two -- 12 units seems to be the common requirement Original thesis research applying geospatial technologies geography non-geography Project design and implementation gis curriculum course development and assessment