Master of Science in Geographic Information Science

Students in the program choose from the following completion options:

• A coursework-only, no-thesis option for students who do not plan to pursue a doctoral degree or academic career
• A coursework-plus-research-project option for students who wish to enhance their geospatial research skills in a particular area
• A coursework-plus-thesis option for students who plan to pursue a doctoral degree or academic career

Students who choose the coursework-only or the coursework-plus-research-project options can structure their coursework to complete the program in one year.

Other program highlights:

• Curriculum informed by the Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge (GIS&T BoK),
• Late-afternoon or evening classes that accommodate working professionals
• Instructors with advanced degrees who work and conduct research in the field
• State-of-the-art research labs equipped with modern computing, commercial and open-source software tools, various remote sensing sensors, and manned and unmanned aircrafts

Fieldwork and Research Opportunities

Department of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences faculty work and conduct research in the field. They have been awarded grants from various institutions, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, Geological Society of America, National Geospatial Intelligence Agency, National Institutes of Health, National Park Service, National Science Foundation, U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, Electric Power Research Institute, Missouri Department of Natural Resources, Ameren and others.

1. Graduates will be able to define Geographic Information Science in terms of its key scientific themes and fields of application.
2. Graduates will be able to discuss how GIS and remote sensing is used to investigate problems related to sustainability and environmental science.
3. Graduates will be able to demonstrate effective written and oral communication skills needed to disseminate geographic information.
4. Graduates will be able to apply appropriate research design methods to address problems that are germane to the field of GIScience and applied geospatial analysis.
5. Graduates will be able to demonstrate practices and approaches for working effectively on team-based projects.
6. Graduates will be able to demonstrate effective cartographic/geovisualization skills employing principles of map design and graphic representation techniques.
7. Graduates will be able to demonstrate knowledge of geospatial data in terms of Earth geometry, georeferencing systems, map projections, data quality, and metadata standards and practice.
8. Graduates will be able to compare and contrast different approaches to geospatial data modeling involving vector, raster, or hybrid representations.
9. Graduates will be able to demonstrate the use of relational database management systems as applied to geospatial data.
10. Graduates will be able to apply geometric measurement techniques to quantify distance, direction, shape, area, proximity, and connectivity of geospatial features.
11. Graduates will be able to apply basic analytical operations involving buffering, overlays, and map algebra.
12. Graduates will be able to apply advanced analytical methods including point pattern analysis, kernel density estimation, spatial cluster detection, network analysis, and multi-criteria evaluation.
13. Graduates will be able to apply surface analysis techniques to effectively represent continuous surfaces, calculate surface derivatives, analyze surface flow, and analyze intervisibility.
14. Graduates will be able to apply spatial statistics and geostatistics involving measures of spatial autocorrelation and spatial interpolation techniques.
15. Graduates will be able to explain the principles of active and passive remote sensing observation.
16. Graduates will be able to describe and interpret remote sensing spectra and imagery.
17. Graduates will be able to perform supervised, unsupervised and object based classification techniques using remote sensing data.
18. Graduates will be able to apply image processing techniques including radiometric correction, atmospheric correction, change detection, target detection, data fusion.

Graduates from SLU’s GIS master’s program have a very good employment outlook. According to the Geospatial Information and Technology Association, employment in this field is growing at an annual rate of almost 35%, with the commercial subsection of the market expanding by 100% each year.

Recent graduates from this program have been employed by various environmental, remote sensing and GIS companies, including Bayer, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency and U.S. Geological Survey (USGS).