Project Proposal
Introduction
Siena College’s
Academic Community Engagement (ACE) program centers on developing partnerships
with the surrounding community. These partnerships serve a purpose—to address
the needs of the Capital Region through continuous community engagement. ACE
brings together students, faculty, staff and other community members to supply
service to its community partners and enact change.
ACE is currently
working on a larger project which seeks to establish a Capital South Campus Center at 4 Lincoln Square, Albany, NY. This is an educational center that will bring college-level classes to Albany's South End, targeting 16-24 year olds. This project answers the following question; what are the current educational resources available within this community? This project will map surrounding services such as GED and ESL opportunities, workforce development programs, alternative high schools, etc. A GIS model will be used to display these services. The generated map will be shown to
ACE’s community partners as a model of what educational services are available to the South End community already and as a tool to determine which services should be incorporated within the Capital South Campus Center.
Objectives
This project will
create a map of the educational services available within and around Albany's South End. It will do so using GIS. These services will inform the partners working on this project of what resources are out there and what they might include in the education center as a result. The GIS map will also incorporate a population feature within its assessment of these features. Specifically, 16- 24 year olds are being targeted. ACE and its partners are interested in discovering how many people utilize the already existent resources and how it related to their target class.
Methodology
This projects GIS analysis will utilize a regional map of the Albany area. Determining the community educational resources which are already out there however will require research. A map will be developed based on the following;
A)
An overview of the South End region, possibly branching out into neighboring areas, with markers
showing where educational resources are available. Each marker will generate information relaying what the specific service entails, as well as who is offering it. These markers may be colored schemed according to the type of resource which it is.
B) The markers can be taken a step further by showing the related population densities within the displayed area. For example, is our target population (16-24) well represented in a certain area? A graduated colors map would be useful to show where the target population is grouped in accordance with which services are already out there. This will also display the population makeup right at the soon to be Capital South Campus Center.
Data
Sources
This educational facility will be run by Trinity Alliance. Their partners include Hudson Valley Community College, U Albany, Albany Community Action Partnership and Tech Valley Communications, along with Siena College's Academic Community Engagement. The regional map of Albany can be obtained online and will include aerial photos, roads, buildings, etc. and be colored. Educational services already present in the area must be researched. I will contact organizations to assess what is out there. The partners specified above will also be useful data sources in this research process.
Work
Plan
10/22/13: Signed project contract and regional data obtained.
10/29/13: Research and map educational services available
11/5/13: Research and map additional educational services
11/12/13: Research and map additional educational services
11/19/13: Create a population overlay
11/26/13: Additional details to address/fix as requested by partners
End of Semester:
Project map completion and poster
Deliverables
·
Project Proposal
·
Start-up meeting with Dr. Ruth Kassel,
along with continual communication
·
Project blog with weekly blog posts
·
Final colored pdf map on GIS and accompanying poster
