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