Graduate Curriculum

Please be aware that requirements are subject to change. Graduate students also should consult their advisor and the Department of Geography Graduate Manual to ensure the appropriate requirements are met.

Jump to:

• General Requirements →
• Master’s Degree (M.A.) →
• Doctorate (Ph.D.) →

• Graduate Admissions

General Requirements

Students admitted to the GIS and Spatial Analysis graduate program should fulfill the following general requirements:

College level calculus - Those students who do not fulfill this requirement will be required to take a calculus sequence in the Department of Mathematics.

College level statistics - Those students who do not have the necessary statistics background will be required to take at least one statistics course in the Department of Statistics.

Fundamental techniques - The following set of techniques, fundamental to the discipline, is subject to change as the nature of the discipline changes:

• The ability to produce journal quality, computer-generated maps.
• Basic understanding of and ability to use GIS.
• The ability to understand and apply probability theory and basic inferential statistics.
• An understanding of and an ability to apply a fundamental set of multivariate statistical techniques.

Supporting the last of these points is the prominence of multivariate methods in the literature. Without a foundation in multivariate statistics, students will be unable to grasp much of the literature relevant to their work. This is true for virtually all students, even if their own work does not involve the use of these methods.

Other desirable qualifications:

• Exposure to a variety of spatial analytical methods, particularly those that can be integrated with GIS.
• All Master's students in GIS and Spatial Analysis should have an understanding of explicitly spatial analytical issues, including sampling and spatial autocorrelation.
• A solid grounding in research design, including not only experimental design, but problem identification, problem development, proposal writing, and other basic research skills (such as identifying and using reference materials).
• Ability to write computer programs in FORTRAN, C, or other equally flexible languages (higher level languages such as SAS, or macro languages accompanying spreadsheets, for example, would not fulfill this requirement).

Master’s Degree (M.A.)

GIS and Spatial Analysis students can satisfy the Master's requirements by successfully completing a combination of core courses, other GIS and Spatial Analysis courses, additional geography courses, and recommended elective courses from outside the department.

Requirements include at least two advanced GIS and Spatial Analysis courses. Typically, these will be taken during the Autumn and Winter quarters of the second year of the Master's program.

The GIS and Spatial Analysis Master's program requirements include at least two 800 or higher level courses beyond the department-wide quantitative methods sequence (Geography 883.01 and 883.01). We require a thesis and an oral exam for the Masters. All theses must satisfy the Graduate School Thesis requirements.

Core Requirements

• Calculus - Entry level requirement; can be made up after arrival in exceptional cases.
• Statistics - Entry level requirement; can be made up after arrival in exceptional cases.

Note: Course and independent study alternatives for fulfilling the mapping/GIS, research design, and spatial analysis requirements must have adviser approval.

Quantitative Sequence

• Quantitative Methods 1: Univariate and bivariate inferential statistics, spatial and non-spatial sampling, and fundamentals of spatial analysis.
• Quantitative Methods 2: Multivariate statistics, Spatial autocorrelation.

Doctorate (Ph.D.)

All Ph.D. students in GIS and Spatial Analysis must satisfy the core requirements of the Master's degree. In addition, GIS and Spatial Analysis Ph.D. students:

• Should have a knowledge and appreciation of the philosophy of geographic thought.
• Will enroll in at least one 800 or higher-level geography course per year.
• Will complete at least one course in Advanced Quantitative Methods beyond the Master's program core.