Park University senior Tim Reynolds and David Fox, assistant professor of geography, sit around a laptop on the

bottom floor of the Science Building. The geographic information system Ersi sits idle on the screen. Gathering location data and pulling files from the U.S. Census Bureau are normal tasks in room 004. Reynolds is the new work-study in the geography department. The position was written with the intent to have somebody who could help with the geographic information system projects. The system is designed to capture, store, manipulate, analyze, manage and present all types of geographically referenced data. Fox had been getting a steady stream from the Park campus community requesting this service but many of the professors were busy. Reynolds is a double major in geography and computer science. He fit the position qualifications. When the Stylus asked for information on students commuting, Reynolds started with a geographic information system program. Esri is sort of like the Microsoft as far as geographic information system software, Reynolds says. They are the go to guys. Reynolds takes the data, which in this case were Park University campus students addresses. There were 1,400 records. He then looks for tiger line files, which is for mapping census geographic data. Each layer is a different county. Out of the 1,400 records around 396 were not plotted. This could be for many reasons: a student forgot to put part of the address, a P.O. box was found or worst case scenario there was no matching address. Wendy Stapleton worked on the P.O. boxes. Stapleton looked up the zip code and found the nearest post office for each one. The unfound addresses were most likely new housing developments, which were not on the easy access roads file from 2000. Reynolds used Google Maps to help him with the process. He would find the updated address on Google maps and find an estimated location on the map he was working from. He would manually plot the dot. This process took about twelve hours in two days. The following conclusion was found. Fox writes in an email: Based on our estimates, 292 of the 1400 students currently enrolled in at least one class on the Parkville campus have a current residence address that is more than 20 miles away. i.e., Thats 20.857% (or 21%, if you prefer) of the current Parkville campus students that drive 20 miles or more to get to campus for their class(es). Fox foresees the Park University geographic information system lab being a central location not only for Park University first and foremost but for the community of Parkville and Kansas City to come to when geographical information is needed. As word gets around that there is a service like this, Reynolds says, I hope more projects come in. The geographic information system lab is currently available to Park University students majoring in a field related to geography but Fox has sent a request into the budget to get a site license. This would allow any student from Park to be able to download the software. Reynolds began his college career in technology and audio production but realized his junior year the music industry was struggling. He switched his major to a growing field.

The industry of geographic information system is booming and it has been for about two decades, Fox says. In 2004 one of the things we like to site is the U.S. Department of Labor identified geographic information system as one of the top 3 emerging fields for the 21st century. Reynolds said he wanted to find a steady and reliable major but he found everything just a little bit interesting so he chose geography. Fox says geography does encompass all. That is what geographers are like, Fox says. Geographers are people who really have a fascination with a little bit of everything