Towson University’s Outreach Blog

Dawn

I have been with Towson now for over 13 years.  A couple things have changed since I started here:

1) Towson University was actually named Towson State University and

2) I originally worked for the Regional Economic Studies Institute.  After many years and name and position changes, I find myself now working for Information Systems Solutions (or ISS), which is part of DECO (Division of Economic and Community Outreach).

DECO is made up of many different groups, and until recently, I never had the opportunity to work with any of them directly.  We all go to the same office events and our offices are across the hall, but I wasn’t really sure of all their job duties, and they may not have been sure about mine.  Recently I learned more about what the Center for GIS (CGIS) does by participating in a project with them, and it was a great experience.

Let me start out by saying I was a bit nervous.  These are people I say “hi” to in the hall or “excuse me” to when I need to get to the fridge in our little kitchen, but actually working on a project with them, now that made me a bit edgy.  I wasn’t sure how I would fit in and according to my husband I can’t read a map well and can even get lost using our Garmin.  So working with people who are experts in this field was overwhelming to me (though comical to my husband).

The project we worked on dealt with GPS, see Garmin comment above, and it was with Mark Helmken and Michael Bentivegna (Director and Associate Director of CGIS. . .yikes bosses!).   Both of these professionals were great and made me feel like a part of the team, not an outsider by any means.  I was able to learn not only about GPS but also a little bit about how CGIS operates.  Though we are all part of DECO, we are all our own entity, so the great thing for me was learning how we can work together and how each group really does compliment the others.  If one is lacking expertise, chances are another DECO member has it.  This also parlays into being part of a university. DECO as a whole has such a unique ability to tap into resources and get the answers because of who we are and where we are located.

I am pretty confident that my trip to the other side of the hall was not only educational for me but also educational for them as well.  They got to work with someone new and learn a little more about what ISS does and all of this dovetails nicely with being at a university; learning is what it is all about.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 24th, 2010 at 8:25 am and is filed under Business Analysis, Mapping, TU Faculty & Staff. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.