Dana Knop, Class of 2006
Graduate school
The Ohio State University
Urban and Regional Planning Department

Anna Burman, Class of 2006
Graduate School
Northern Illinois University
Geography Department

Lisa Nicholls, Class of 2006
I just wanted to let you know that I'm working as a GIS Mapping Tech in the Assessor's Office for Canyon County in Caldwell, Idaho. I just moved over here last week and started my job. I'm doing cadastral mapping, so I'm learning all sorts of stuff! Right now they work in CAD software but are moving over to ArcMap in a few months. I'm currently going through some software training on some extensions they purchased for ArcMap for cadastral drafting and then quite possibly training the other Mapping Techs on it. Things are going well! I move into my apartment tonight and then my family is coming over tomorrow with the rest of my furniture and will be spending the Thanksgiving holiday with me. I saw on the website that you & some of the Geography majors went to Toledo for the AAG conference. Congrats on all of the awards!

Andrea Rossow, Class of 2005
Andrea Rossow is the Museum Operations Coordinator at The Westcott House Foundation where she provides administrative support in areas such as volunteer coordination, facility rental, special events, and store management. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Business Management and Geography from Wittenberg University in Springfield, Ohio. She has always been interested in geography and began to shift her focus toward the travel and tourism industry. As a geography minor with a focus on tourism, she has used her knowledge to create visitor demographic reports, heritage tourism itineraries, and relationships with area historical and travel associations. Although new to The Westcott House Foundation, Rossow has previous experience in museum operations from the Heritage Center of Clark County, also in Springfield, and conference/event coordination for the Pioneer America Society: Association for the Preservation of Artifacts and Landscapes. She quotes, "I'm really glad I decided to extend my efforts at Wittenberg and minor in geography. The faculty has made me realize that geography is all around and associated with everything we are involved in.

Brandi Bowman, Class of 2003
I want to stress the importance of college internships. Internships are a great way to meet people in your field of study and can be very beneficial for your career. During the spring of 2002, I was an intern at the Clark County Soil and Water Conservation District. I really enjoyed the work I was doing at this agency and decided to return in the spring of 2003 again as an intern. During the fall of my senior year, I was offered a part-time job with Clark County Soil and Water Conservation District. I accepted this job and am now the Watershed Coordinator for the Lower Mad River. My job duties will include creating a watershed management plan for the Lower Mad River (Clark and Champaign counties) and also to hold meetings for citizens residing in this watershed. The purpose of these meetings is to get the community involved in making decisions about the watershed and also to inform them about the work I am doing. A grant from the Ohio Department of Natural Resources will fund my work. This grant begins in January of 2003 and will continue until September of 2003. I would advise every student to complete at least one internship while at Wittenberg. It is a great way to find post-graduation employment!

Christy (Kretschmann) Johnson, Class of 2003
I am currently employed by the City of Clearwater, FL. Working in the Engineering department, my job duties mainly focus on keeping the various components of the city infrastructure updated in our GIS database. I maintain several city atlases for use by the general public, city employees and outside consultants or contractors. I also make a variety of custom maps. Sometimes the maps require a great deal of ingenuity when finding or creating the specific data required. The most challenging part of my job is to decipher exactly what the customer needs in their map, how they plan on using it and how to best illustrate what they need. That generally requires me to educate the customer on what GIS can do for them. The GIS courses I took at Wittenberg allowed me to hit the ground running and have the ability to produce maps to the specifications required by the city.

Scott Snider, Class of 2002
After Wittenberg I moved onto graduate school at Ohio University. I am focusing on Resource Management hoping to someday get a position with either the National Forest Service or National Park Service. I am currently working as a Teaching Assistant for the Cartography class here at OU and as an intern with the Athens County Regional Planning Commission doing population trend analysis for Athens County.

Betsy Beymer, Class of 2002
Here are my reasons why I decided to be a Geography major... During my first two years of taking classes at Wittenberg, I focused my studies on Biology. After attending a Geography conference in my second year I knew that I wanted to study Geography. Geography allows me to focus specifically on human-environment relationships, something that the classes in Biology did not include. I knew that I wanted to be a part of a discipline that would give me the freedom to study anything and Geography does just that. I also was intrigued by Geography because it is a discipline that is concerned with the world and can give you the freedom to look at things at a global scale. As a Geography graduate student, I am able to see the diversity that Geography encompasses everyday. This diversity is seen not only through the people who study Geography, but with the areas and ideas in which they focus on.

Tony Pellettiere, Class of 2002
National GIS Account Manager – The Sidwell Company

After graduation in 2002 I worked as a technical support specialist for Geographic Technologies Group (GTG). I was involved in the installation, setup, training and project management of their software and services. I have since moved on to The Sidwell Company as their National GIS Account Manager. The Sidwell Company focuses on cadastral GIS with local government which is actually quite interesting. As an account manager I have taken on more of a sales role which was quite a transition. However, I can’t imagine a better job! I continue to work closely with local government and ESRI to learn the latest on GIS technology and spread the good word of GIS and Sidwell to county government. My jobs have required that I travel quite extensively across the County so I have been fortunate to come across many places I normally would not have thought to visit!

Tony writes: " I can't tell you how glad I am that you talked me into taking those GIS classes! I have really benefitted from that earlier exposure and can't imagine not working in this field. While I am not dealing so much with the day to day technical stuff anymore I work very closely with the people at ESRI and our technical staff at Sidwell (mainly in the local government and cadastral discipline) so I am always aware of the latest and greatest technologies. So thank you again!"

Clinton Cooper, Class of 2001
I am currently employed with the Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission in Dayton, Ohio. We mainly focus on transportation planning in the three county area; Montgomery, Greene, and Miami counties. I work as a Transportation Planner 1 and am in charge of various projects. I am charge of the traffic counting program which entails working with the local jurisdictions and the Ohio Department of Transportation in coordinating where traffic counts are going to be conducted. From this information, I compile a database in which we use to publish a traffic volume map every four years for the region. Also this data is used for our transportation model in which we forecast future traffic growth and congestion trends at our current growth rate. I am also in charge of maintaining other databases which include a development tracking database, used for projections in business and residential growth, and an up to date business location database, which stores current employment figures broken down into small traffic analysis zones. In all these projects I have used on main tool and that tool is GIS. The GIS course I took at Wittenberg has had a powerful effect on my career. For a geographer, analysis is done mainly through spatial and statistical study. GIS is a way to combine those both into one simple computer application. Not only is this skill just good for geographical applications, but also can be used in almost every other field of study that deals with spatial analysis. The ability to produce findings in way that is easy for other people to understand is a valuable skill in today's society. Many courses in the urban planning tract led to my understanding of how public sector planning works. For those of you who are looking at this tract of geography, I would also encourage taking courses in Political Science and Urban Studies to help tie together all the ideas of city planning and government, for I have learned they go hand and hand. Every course in this three areas will provide valuable knowledge as you begin to travel your career path.