Savanna:OK, hi! It's really nice to be here. So I'm a part-time student, sorry - a part-time
staff member with Tacoma Campus Planning. I'm also in the Masters of Science in the
Geospatial Technologies program in the Urban Studies program. So there's been a great buzz
about GIS in Campus Planning but it hadn't really been adopted into smaller campuses.
We've used AutoCAD for space management and development and developing buildings and whatnot.
With such a small campus like UWT at about 100 acres, the awareness hasn't come about
until recently. For many of the spatial and social development projects, we've hired out
consultants and contractors for the analyses and project plan reports. Now, we're starting
to learn that GIS can be really used and taken advantage of for our projects such as this.
Obviously, we have the spatial planning that we do and then we have to take in the student
life and academic planning processes as well. For the past year or so, we began developing
a useful Geodatabase. This included creating shape files, networking with the region around
us to get their data, and using open source data sources. Right now, we have to focus
on maintenance and indexing - that's kind of our next step as well. The University of
Washington and its branches uses its program called GeoSIMs to gather and maintain internal
space data. This past Spring, we at UW Tacoma accomplished 100% data fulfillment. The format
of the layout is using the floor plans to gather information about each individual space,
including offices and common spaces. So we find out who's using the space, what program
is using the space, and with that, we can help align our programs to be together but
still maintain some flexibility. The University of - excuse me. So, this past year we worked
on our campus implementation plan - kind of an update on our master plan - focusing on
the previous growth we have and the future growth we have. This bottom one was taken
about 2005. As you can see in this current photo, there's been a lot of new building
development that we've experienced. This image kind of helps to show which buildings have
been redone or built up. The ones with the X's are our next steps. As you know, GIS involves
more than just space. As campus continues to grow, so does our student body. We've hired
consultants to research UW Tacoma's student housing needs. We're going to use GIS to enhance
the analysis. We had to ask how many people might need student housing. Working with raw
data from our institutional research team, we were able to determine how many students
come from separate regions and scales. Consultants ask for the same raw data so that they can
create something that looks kind of like this. Using GIS, we were able to do a lot more and
provide some visual, compelling resources. We wanted to take a look at where students
come from across the globe. Most of our international students come from China, but we have a lot
in the Eastern world as well. There's a lot of diversity from the state of Washington,
our residential students, as well. The average distance between their home and campus is
actually 15 minutes. There's a lot more from all around the country that could use some
student housing. By the way, we only have 132 beds on campus for housing purposes so
with 290 students just internationally, there is a need. We also looked at student life
and outreach. UW Tacoma has a big focus on retail space. Our whole east side, Pacific
Avenue, is full of food and service opportunities for the community. We've looked into expanding
the use of our Husky Card. Right now, it's just used for the U-Pass, getting to print
at the library, buying things at the book store. We found about 60, there are more,
food establishments in the downtown community. There is a Link station right off campus and
it goes all the way through campus. These all are within a block or two from each Link
stop so there would be advantages to extend the Husky Card use to use at local restaurants
and in the 20 restaurants we have on campus alone. So what's next? Being in the Masters
of Geospatial Technologies program, I need to do a project for my capstone, of course.
At work, we're looking at transportation options but more so to bring awareness to our students
of alternative transportation that they might have. Another project is to be able to create
more tools for our potential tenants of our retail space to help them make more efficient
decisions with that. And that's it!
[applause]