Local High School Students Join the HESA Lab to Map Calumet- GRACE 2018

The Historical Environments Spatial Analytics Lab is hosting our third class of GRACE Interns. GRACE (GIS Resources and Applications for Career Education) is a NSF-funded collaboration between Eastern Michigan University and Michigan Tech that aims to introduce high school students to STEM fields through geospatial technologies. We have 13 Interns from Houghton and Calumet High Schools, and this year, we are conducting fieldwork in the Village of Calumet.

We take our Interns through each phase of project design beginning with conceptualization. The Interns initially develop themes related to urban design and planning.  Within these broader themes, they narrow down related concepts and move to asking questions such as:

• "What in the built environment promotes walkability for youth?"
• "What is safe or unsafe space?"
• "How does heritage aid in urban development?" 

The Interns break into teams and being with whiteboarding of the themes and concepts which provides an outlet for discussion with mentors and their fellow Interns. The Interns brainstorm about what can be observed and what types of data can be collected in the field supporting investigations into their questions. 

Our Interns are mapping features associated with themes including safety, walkability, and public spaces. They began practicing their fieldwork techniques last week in Houghton. This gave them the opportunity to use Esri's Collector app to create geospatial data about the built environment.

This summer's project is to build a municipal webGIS for the Village of Calumet. David Geisler, the Village of Calumet President, and Leah Polzein, the Director of Main Street Calumet, met with the Interns to help them better understand the economic, social, and heritage needs of the community and how a robust GIS can assist in the Village's planning, management and grant-making.

​The Interns are mapping elements within the community such as street lights and sidewalk conditions. During the first 2 days of fieldwork this past week, the Interns have already mapped over 740 points and digitized over 4,000 polygons!  Stop by and say hello if you see us out on the street the next couple of weeks.