Dr. David Cowen, Professor, University of South Carolina, Department of Geography
State and Local Perspectives on a Vision for National Land Parcel Data

David J. Cowen is former chair of the Department of Geography, co director of the Center for GIS and Remote Sensing, and a Carolina Distinguished Professor of Geography at the University of South Carolina. He is the 2005 recipient of the ESRI Lifetime Achievement Award in GIS. He chaired the Mapping Science Committee of the National Research Council for six years, is a National Associate of the National Academy of Sciences and a member of the NRC Board on Earth Sciences and Resources and the Board of the Geographic Information Systems Certification Institute. He is also the current chair of the NRC Study Committee “Land Parcel Databases: A National Vision”. Since 1967 his research and teaching interests have focused on the development and implementation of geographic information systems in a wide range of settings. During his thirty six year career at the University of South Carolina he directed the College Computing Center for twenty-two years and served as Interim Vice President for Computing. He established one of first academic programs in GIS and has directed forty five master’s students and eleven Ph.D. students. He has held several important positions including being the president of the Cartographic and Geographic Information Society, the US Delegate to the International Geographical Union Commission on Geographic Information Systems and chair of the Association of American Geographers Geographic Information Systems Specialty Group. Dr. Cowen earned B.A. and M.A. degrees from the State University of New York at Buffalo and a Ph.D. degree in geography from Ohio State University in 1970.

Matt Dozier, President/CEO, The EAST Initiative
EAST Participants and Projects

Matt Dozier is the CEO of the EAST (Environmental and Spatial Technology) Initiative; an innovative educational reform effort that combines community service projects with high-end technology in a student-centered environment. The EAST model has been recognized nationally as an innovative, relevant, and successful approach to education by the Federal Department of Education and other groups. Students are exposed to strategies that help them move from the traditional self-centered approaches of learning into a more realistic (and more relevant) interdependent environment that stress understanding, collaboration, and team approaches to problem resolution.

Dozier first became affiliated with EAST in 1998 while teaching at North Pulaski High School in Jacksonville, Arkansas becoming the first facilitator of that program. He soon became a member of the first EAST Professional Development training team, helping to develop curriculum and train hundreds of teachers as the EAST program spread to over 200 schools in eight states. In 2001, Dozier joined the EAST staff full-time, serving variously as the Initiative’s Communication Director, Assistant Program Director, and National Program Director. Matt was named EAST CEO in 2007.

Dozier is currently serving on the Arkansas Broadband Initiative, a group working to raise awareness and access to broadband in Arkansas. He is the editor of Autism is Not a Life Sentence: How One Family Took on Autism and WON! by Lynley Summers which was published by the Autism Asperger Publishing Company in 2006. He earned his bachelor’s degree from the University of Central Arkansas.

The EAST Program

The EAST Initiative has a ten-year track record of helping schools, teacher-facilitators, and students better engage technology education, service learning, and individualized educational goals in a program that has been named a model by the Department of Education and the Department of Labor.

EAST is an educational program that combines the power of cutting-edge technology, authentic teamwork, and significant community service in a manner that helps students to develop their own interests and aptitudes in a positive environment. At the core of the EAST program is a dedication to service. All students, regardless of past experience or previous expectation are encouraged, expected, and required to work in teams that tackle self-selected community service projects. In the context of these projects, EAST students often move beyond being “merely” volunteers and begin to assume roles of responsibility for solving local issues. This is a smoother transition than is often the case because the students bring skill and expertise in technology areas that many established community leaders do not have.

The EAST model allows students to take ownership of both the challenges of their communities and of the responsibility for seeking solutions. The students move beyond the theoretical exploration of issues and into active learning and service in the cause of bettering their communities. This model empowers students to become good citizens at a time in their lives when we know that they are beginning to ingrain habits of person and mind that will stay with them the rest of their lives. This model teaches leadership in a natural way that does not focus necessarily on who is in charge as much as who has the skills, the passion, and the interest to solve the myriad problems. It teaches character development by putting a premium on learner-positive habits of person. Most importantly it teaches all of these valuable life skills not by “teaching” them, but rather by allowing students to live them in a safe environment (a facilitated classroom) where they can further their intellectual and personal development.

For more information about EAST and to learn more about the types of projects that students are working on, please visit www.eastinitiative.org.

Jim Geringer, Wyoming Governor 1995-2003, Director, Policy and Public Sector Strategies, Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI)

Jim Geringer, a native of Wheatland, Wyoming, earned his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Kansas State University. Mr. Geringer served as a project officer on unmanned space programs for the Air Force for NASA, including the Global Positioning Satellite System, early detection/warning systems, the Interim Upper Stage for the Space Shuttle and the Mars Viking Lander, activation of the Peacekeeper missile system and disaster recovery from nuclear, biological and chemical warfare.

Mr. Geringer served the Wyoming Legislature from 1983 to 1994, including six years each in the House and the Senate. Committee chairmanships included Appropriations, Judiciary and Management Audit. He was first elected as Wyoming Governor in 1994 and reelected in 1998. Mr. Geringer focused on improving education through standards, accountability and technology, modernized economic planning to extensively include technology, changed how natural resource agencies among state, federal and local governments worked together, implemented strategic planning tied to performance based budgeting and upon leaving office, provided Wyoming state government with a budget surplus, one of very few states to make that claim early in 2003. In addition, he emphasized community based solutions particularly for health and social services and promoted the use of consensus building to resolve difficult issues.

Mr. Geringer has served on the GeoSpatial One Stop Board of Directors, National Commission on Mathematics and Science Teaching for the 21st Century, the National Commission on Service-Learning, the National Commission on Teaching and America’s Future, chair of the National Governors Association Technology Task Force and as charter member and current Chair of the Board of Trustees, Western Governors University.

Currently, Mr. Geringer is a member of the Mapping Sciences Committee under the National Academy of Sciences National Research Council; Western Interstate Energy Board ; Association of Governing Boards for higher education; Operation Public Education; the Board of Governors of the Park City Center for Public Policy; Board member of NatureServe and, co-chair of the Policy Consensus Initiative.

Mr. Geringer joined Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI) in the summer of 2003 as Director of Policy and Public Sector Strategies, focused on how senior elected and corporate officials can enable productivity through technology more effectively in business and government. ESRI, the world leader in location based software and applications, is headquartered in Redlands, California.

Jim Langtry, Chair, MidAmerica GIS Consortium (MAGIC)

Jim is currently Chair and a Nebraska representative to the Mid-America GIS Consortium (MAGIC) and is employed as the USGS Geospatial Liaison for Nebraska. He has a bachelor’s degree in Architecture and a Master’s Degree in Geography, both from University of Nebraska. He has over 19 years of experience in GIS being involved with the development of Lancaster County’s GIS since it’s inception in 1988 through 2007. Jim has also served as a proxy member of the Nebraska GIS Steering Committee; served on the development committee that created the Nebraska GIS/LIS Association and served as a member of the Board and President of that Association. His involvement in GIS and work with other agencies in the City of Lincoln and Lancaster County has earned the combined Lincoln/Lancaster County Enterprise GIS system several awards as well as being regarded as an outstanding example of an Enterprise Geographic Information System. Jim has participated in several of the semi-annual Nebraska GIS Symposium organizing committees and was Chairman of the 2003 Symposium. He received his GIS Professional (GISP) designation in March of 2004.

Anne Hale Miglarese, President and Managing Director, EarthData
Mergers, Acquisitions, and Disruptive Technology: Why is this happening and where are we headed?

Anne Hale Miglarese serves Fugro EarthData, Inc. as president and managing director. In this capacity, she is responsible for the company’s overall performance including operations, business development, research and development, finance, and human resources.

Prior to joining EarthData in 2004, Ms. Miglarese served as chief of the Coastal Information Services branch of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coastal Services Center for 10 years. She began her career in the private sector as an environmental consultant specializing in regulatory compliance for the Clean Water and National Environmental Policy Acts. Throughout her career, Ms. Miglarese has worked for numerous state agencies in South Carolina including the Department of Health and Environmental Control, the Water Resources Commission, and the Department of Natural Resources.

Ms. Miglarese was a founding member of the National States Geographic Information Council, most recently receiving the Outstanding Service Award for exceptional and dedicated service to NSGIC and indeed the Nation, by advancing the purpose of the Council. Ms. Miglarese is also a past chairwoman of the South Carolina State Mapping Advisory Committee, a past chairwoman of the Federal Geographic Data Committee’s Marine and Coastal Spatial Data Subcommittee, and a previous board member of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association. She currently is a member of the Board of Directors for the Management Association of Private Photogrammetric Surveyors and an editorial board member of GeoSpatial Solutions.

Anne Hale Miglarese holds a bachelor of science and a master of science in geography from the University of South Carolina.

John Palatiello, Executive Director, MAPPS
GIS, Congress and You

John M. Palatiello is Executive Director of the Management Association for Private Photogrammetric Surveyors, (MAPPS, www.mapps.org), an association of private firms in the geospatial field. He is also President of the firm of John M. Palatiello & Associates, Inc., (www.jmpa.us) a public affairs consulting firm located in Reston, Virginia, providing government affairs and association management services to firms and organizations in the engineering and mapping related fields. He serves as Administrator of the Council on Federal Procurement of Architectural-Engineering Services (COFPAES, www.cofpaes.org), a coalition of the nation’s leading design professional societies. He is also a member of the Board of the Institute for Geographic Information Systems Studies (IGISS), a non-profit education and research institution.

John has long been involved in public policy issues affecting the geospatial community. He was the first Joint Government Affairs Director of the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping (ACSM) and the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) and was Assistant Executive Director of ACSM. He was appointed to an advisory committee to the Virginia state legislature to create the Virginia Geographic Information Network (VGIN), and was a member of a study committee on licensing of Photogrammetrists that made recommendations to the Virginia Board of Architects, Professional Engineers, Land Surveyors, Certified Interior Designers and Landscape Architects (APELSCIDLA).

John has served as Chairman of the Procurement and Privatization Council of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and current serves on the Chamber’s Small Business Council. He was also Chairman of the Business Coalition for Fair Competition, an organization of more than two dozen associations that promote policies and legislation that seek to focus government on its core mission, while curbing government commercial activities. He is a member of the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE), on which he has served on its Government Relations Section board of directors.

A Connecticut native, John has a degree in political science from The American University in Washington, DC. He served for eight years as a Congressional staff assistant, including service as an aide to former Congressman John Myers (R-IN) and former Congressman Bill Hendon (R-NC).

He is a frequent author of articles on legislative, marketing and public policy issues, specializing in work in the geospatial field, Federal procurement and government competition, and has testified before several Congressional committees on these topics, and has made numerous presentations to National Academy of Sciences panels. He was active in the 1986 White House Conference on Small Business, drafting provisions at the Virginia state conference on government competition with small business that were ultimately approved by the national conference and he is a participant in the Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy procurement roundtable. He was a leader in the effort to enact the Federal Government’s first comprehensive legislation on outsourcing, known as the Federal Activities Inventory Reform (FAIR) Act, Public Law 105-270. John was a member of the editorial board of GIM International magazine, a journal on geomatics, and he is a contributing editor of P.O.B. magazine.

John is a former 9-year member of the Fairfax County (Virginia) Planning Commission, representing the Hunter Mill district, that includes the planned community of Reston and the Dulles Corridor. He has held leadership positions in numerous community, civic and political organizations in Virginia. He has served on the Fairfax County Major League Baseball Stadium Site Selection Committee, the Transportation Advisory Committee and Airports Advisory Committee. He is a member of the Fairfax County Republican Committee, a past President of the Republican Club of Greater Reston, and a delegate to several Republican conventions.