SpARC’s strength is the breadth of functions it serves on campus and for community partners. Like many campus units, it is an entity with a large and diverse base of users who share services and benefit from each other’s expertise.  SpARC supports the entire UC Merced faculty, staff and students.

Refinements to the 2009 Plan

A key principle of the 2009 Strategic Academic Vision is The World at Home, the concept that the challenges facing the San Joaquin Valley make it a microcosm of the world and thus uniquely position UC Merced to address global problems through a focus on the local.  The challenges include health, poverty, education, and environmental and cultural sustainability.  SpARC’s mission complements the 2009 vision since 1) spatial analysis and thinking are fundamental to solving these problems; 2) as pointed out in the 2009 vision, the solutions will have to be interdisciplinary which is ingrained in SpARC; and 3) SpARC’s niche derives from its proximity to the Sierra Nevada Region and San Joaquin Valley, as well as its relationships with local community and land management partners including local government, state and local agencies, and federal agencies such as the National Parks Service, US Geological Survey, and the US Forest Service.  Indeed, SpARC’s focus on interdisciplinary research and education in the spatial sciences connects it to all five of the research themes of the 2009 vision:

1. Environmental Sustainability: The spatial sciences are key to developing the processes and resource management practices required to achieve this goal.
2. Human Health: Public health, which deals with prevention rather than treatment of disease, is a solution to a major problem for the San Joaquin Valley in the form of epidemics of asthma and diabetes as well as major health disparities because of poverty and illiteracy.  Spatial data and analysis are fundamental to creating and implementing public health policies.
3. Cognitive Science and Intelligent Systems—Interdisciplinary Inquiry in Minds, Machines and Management: Intelligent systems are needed to address the Big Data problem.  Most of this data has a spatial component, either through association with a place on the Earth, or in some other spatial reference frame such as the locations of the atoms in a molecule.
4. Community, Culture and Identity: These topics include issues related to the distribution and well-being of individuals and communities of the Central Valley and beyond, and relates to the study and management of the monuments of civilization of the past and present. 
5. Dynamics of Social and Economic Progress: Societies and economies are increasingly globally interconnected and thus cannot be studied in isolation.  Some of the strongest connections between these entities are geospatial.

In summary, SpARC’s mission fits well with the 2009 Strategic Academic Vision.  However, since spatial analysis and thinking play a role in so many disciplines, it is likely that the center would remain relevant even if the specific research themes were refined.  This is especially true if the principle of The World at Home persists.

Impact

SpARC fulfills an important need at UC Merced.  Centers of the type described here exist at almost every university in the country and ours meets the unique location and vision of UC Merced.  Diverse researchers across all campuses utilize spatial analysis and visualization, and it is ubiquitous in campus planning, communications, development, education and government relations as well as scholarship.  UC Merced partners are utilizing the training, services and opportunities for collaboration that SpARC offers.

Needed Resources

In 2020, SpARC will expand its capacities to serve as a Centralized Research Unit appropriate to a research university that provides

• Staffing a full-time lab offering drop-in access to computers running specialized spatial science software, portable equipment rental (e.g. GPS receivers), large-format printing, map and atlas scanning, and spatial data serving.
• Providing short term spatial analysis and visualization consultation and assistance for graduate students and faculty on a no-recharge basis
• Supporting ongoing data creation, project and map design, data analysis and data serving services on a recharge basis. 
• Offering beginning and advanced spatial science short courses for faculty, staff, students and community partners on a tuition basis. 
• Maintaining site licenses and managing installations of spatial science software packages.
• Running a spatial science seminar and brown bag series. 
• Partnering with campus and community applicants to seek gifts, grants and contracts with a spatial analysis and visualization component. 

In addition, although SpARC will not be a degree granting department nor support its own faculty FTEs, SpARC will also play a lead role in developing an cross-school undergraduate minor in Spatial Science a self-paying MA in Spatial Science, and workshops and continuing education courses in spatial science.  These initiatives could include a hybrid-distance learning component for Central Valley and Sierra Nevada professionals.  The same MA courses will also support an optional spatial science specialization for PhD students in all of UC Merced’s graduate programs.  We estimate 100 students enrolled in undergraduate minor, 50 students enrolled in the MA program, and 200 continuing education students enrolled in workshops and short courses, with the potential for developing customized curricula in co-sponsorship with the National Parks Institute and other UC Merced initiatives.  The curricula will include principles of GIS and other emerging GIScience technologies including LIDAR, remote sensing, geographic visualization, and geospatial data mining. SpARC affiliates will also participate in and provide leadership in state and national organizations such as UCGIS and CGIA. In order to support these goals, we need the following resources.

• A four person SpARC staff including an academic coordinator, web development/GIS technical specialist, administrative support person/outreach coordinator, and a permanently funded executive director
• Approximately 20 new faculty hires across campus whose expertise includes spatial science and whose undergraduate and graduate teaching portfolios will contribute to spatial science curricula.
• Equipment including a terrestrial LIDAR scanner, ASD hyperspectral instrument, 3D monitor, upgraded high-capacity data servers, high-accuracy GPS, laser range finders, and large format printers/scanners; and adequate laboratory and storage facilities for these devices.
• A GIS teaching lab with a capacity of 30-40 students
• A laboratory suite of approximately 2500 square feet to accommodate four full time employees, a conference room, a computer laboratory with 20 workstations, highest-speed broadband connectivity, large format printing, and layout tables.  It would be ideal to relocate the SpARC suite to a research-hub facility of similar digitally-oriented shared core facilities, or the library.  This would better facilitate centralized campus-wide access and management than SpARC’s current location in a SSHA building.

Most Closely Aligned Programs

• Fully interdisciplinary and cross-campus spatial science research centers at many research universities including the UC Santa Barbara Center for Spatial Studies (http://spatial.ucsb.edu/), the Harvard University Center for Geographic Analysis (http://www.gis.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do), USC and the UC Berkeley Geospatial Innovation Facility (http://gif.berkeley.edu/).
• MS and continuing education programs including the MS GIS program at the University of Redlands (http://www.spatial.redlands.edu/msgis/) and the GIScience and Technology Certificate Program through the Spatial Sciences Institute at the University of Southern California (http://spatial.usc.edu/index.php/graduate-programs/gist-graduate-certifi...).
• Interdisciplinary and cross-campus undergraduate education in spatial science located outside the auspices of geography departments, most notably the UC Santa Barbara Minor in Spatial Studies (http://spatial.ucsb.edu/programs/academic-minor.php)