Wisconsin Geospatial News

Office takes change in stride

For current staff here at the State Cartographer’s Office, change has become the norm this summer. On the heels of retirement of Assistant State Cartographer Bob Gurda we also said goodbye to student staff member Jesse Adams; while students Catrine Lehrer-Brey and Adam Simcock took summer leave to pursue academic opportunities. In the meantime, Matt Bloch, Naijun Zhu, and Ben Sheesley joined our staff to work on a project to re-vamp the existing Wisconsin Land Information Clearinghouse (WISCLINC) site. As autumn approaches, the search for a new Assistant State Cartographer continues and the onset of a new semester will no doubt re-shuffle our student staff once again.

Summer staff have worked hard on a variety of projects including:

  • the aforementioned FGDC grant project to re-cast WISCLINC to accomodate emerging web services;
  • wrapping up support for an IAGT grant for Visualization of Coastal Erosion;
  • this issue of the Mapping Bulletin; and
  • preparation to begin work on our newly-acquired FGDC grant to web-enable geodetic control information as an OGC Web Feature Service.

To top things off, the Office has received its first serious face-lift in 30 years of existence, moving up 2 floors to 384 Science Hall. The move has facilitated re-shaping our space and workflow at a critical time as we increase student staff and pursue additional project opportunities. An Open House will highlight many of these changes and perceived benefits as we join our peer cartographic units in Science Hall in welcoming a new academic year, new faculty and students, and new possibilities in the coming months and years.