Developing Georgia's Women Leaders in GIS

This program was initiated with funding from a NSF Carolyn Merry Mini-Grant to develop leadership skills in Women in GIScience in the state of Georgia. A statewide survey was administered and twenty survey participants were selected to attend a one day professional development workshop in Athens, Georgia in 2018.

By focusing on Georgia women in GIS in the early career phase, we are hoping to inspire women to seek position of leadership, not just get a job. This program builds on the objectives of TRELIS, a professional development for women in the geospatial sciences in higher education.

 Training and Retaining Leaders in STEM - Geospatial Sciences (TRELIS-GS) instills the concept of a human capital trellis or scaffold of support, and represents the reality of nonlinear career trajectories that move sideways, take leaps, and do not follow a single upward ladder. 

Leadership capacity is constructed around the topics of career retention strategies, mentoring training, career transitions, technical professional development, and work-life integration. TRELIS is co-managed with the University of Maine and supported with generous funding from the National Science Foundation (Grant #1660400).

Research questions:

• On what trajectory do Georgia women in GIS/Geography/Geosciences see their career?
• How do they get to where they want to be?
• How do they reach these career goals while maintaining work-life integration and satisfaction?

Our objective is to not only find answers to these questions, but to also develop Georgia leaders in GIS.

By focusing on Georgia women in GIS in the early career phase, we are hoping to inspire women to seek position of leadership, not just get a job in GIS.

Dr. Angela Yao
University of Georgia

Dr. Jia Lu
Valdosta State University

This project is funded by Carolyn Merry Mini-Grant, a sub-award of the National Science Foundation (Grant #1660400).

For more information about this project or to receive this information in another format, contact PI Dr. Allison Bailey via email at allison.bailey@ung.edu