Making Maps: Internship - RHEC Trail Map Creation

With the help of the Outreach Coordinator for the certificate program, who knew of my past experience in environmental education, I was able to obtain a small unpaid internship this past spring/summer with the Roy Hyatt Environmental Center. The center is an environmental outdoor day school in Cantonment, FL owned by the Escambia County School District. Students in 2nd and 5th grade come to the center to learn about science and nature through hands-on curriculum that correlates to the state core standards. While the center has been around for a number of years, no accurate trail and property maps existed. My job would be to create an accurate, attractive, useable map for the center to use with their students and guests.

Although I had acquired basic ArcMap and cartography skills during my first two courses in spring 2015, I was new to creating a set of maps myself from scratch. The biggest new skills I would experience: learning to use a handheld GPS device well enough to collect some point and polyline data, learning to download data from a device, and establishing a work flow for map creation. Skills I brought to the project: communication, self-initiated research, graphic design, and project development.

40% of my internship was creating two maps in ArcMap (I decided against carrying the data into CorelDraw as the map layout was very simple and the staff had neither CorelDraw nor ArcMap), 20% of my time was data collection and processing, 20% communications, and 20% research for a potential avenue of creating a StoryMap Journal (deemed closed for now due to my time constraints and the needs of the center). The final project was the successful production and acceptance by the center's director of two maps: one of the buildings on property and one of the two main trails used by the students.

This internship provided me with 31.5 hours out of 130 I need to complete my certificate. More importantly, it afforded me the opportunity to carry out a GIS project from start to finish, gain some resume worthy GIS experience, and continue to help environmental centers positively impact the students and teachers they serve.