Tucked away on the second floor of Morgan Library, the Geospatial Centroid overlooks the Lory Student Center, observing from above the flow of campus activity. As the virtual (and physical) “centroid” of geospatial activity on campus, the Centroid serves as a hub of technical services, research support, training, and events related to geospatial technologies. Geospatial technologies include geographic information systems (GIS), cartography, web mapping, remote sensing, field data collecting, and other forms of spatial data and analyses that can be useful—and at times essential—across many disciplines. Geospatial technologies enable us to capture, view, analyze and visualize any data that has a location component to it, enabling analyses across diverse datasets with place as its anchor.

What does this mean for the research community? For over 10 years, the Centroid has provided technical assistance to students, researchers, staff, and faculty, on projects as diverse as alternative transportation services, biofuels potential, real estate projections, and food access. Each of these projects, and countless others, have been enhanced by a spatial perspective and geospatial technologies, by putting into context where things occur and how they are impacted by other things happening at the same place.

With administrative support from CSU Libraries, the Geospatial Centroid is primarily a self-supporting, fee-for-service entity. Our work includes external consulting and partnerships with government, non-profit, and business clients, as well as internal research support for faculty and staff on campus. We deliver on these partnerships with four full-time staff, and several staff affiliates, as well as a robust student internship program. Historically, the bulk of our research support came in a post-hoc manner, where researchers needed Centroid assistance on an already funded project. However, we are now moving towards earlier engagement on research proposals and partnerships where we directly support proposal writing and preliminary analyses. Additionally, we recently received our first external grant directly to the Centroid, a NASA project for environmental justice research. Going forward we plan to grow our research services both on our own grants and by becoming critical members of research on campus and beyond.

The Centroid professional staff love what they do and are extremely encouraging and enthusiastic about sharing their knowledge and resources with others.

Caitlin Mothes, Research and Program Coordinator, shares that her work with the Centroid is “rewarding both personally and professionally. I love the opportunity to work on such a broad range of topics and important research questions. I regularly see the positive impact these technologies provide to both the research and broader community. Also, I enjoy teaching people how geospatial technologies can impact their work and bring new insights and answers to their questions in ways they were not able to before.”

Over the years, the Centroid has expanded its capacity as well as the diversity of technologies it employs. While still competent and supportive of traditional GIS platforms (e.g., the Esri ArcGIS suite), the Centroid now has expertise in open-source methods and programming (e.g., R, Python, Google Earth Engine) and can cater to the needs of researchers with interests in those areas.

The Geospatial Centroid is located in 211G Morgan Library (up the main staircase near the Help Desk; turn sharp right and head north through the bookstacks) and is open Mondays through Thursdays, 10:00 am – 4:00 pm (website). Appointments are highly encouraged for Geospatial Help Desk services. For project assistance, appointments, and any other inquiries, email: [email protected]

Staff include Matt Ross (Centroid Director, Asst Professor in Ecosystem Science and Sustainability), Sophia Linn (Associate Director), Caitlin Mothes (Research and Program Coordinator), Dan Carver (Centroid Technical Manager), Josh Reyling (Geospatial Help Desk Lead), Elizabeth Tulanowski (Education Coordinator), Kevin Worthington (Geospatial Data Manager), and student interns.

The Library is supported by Research Administrators Catherine Kane, Barb Gustison, and OSP Team 5 with Senior Research Administrator, Catherine Douras, and Research Administrator, Sheila Arnold.

We hope you are enjoying learning about different units at CSU and the incredible work being accomplished across campus. Let us know if OSP can spotlight your unit by emailing [email protected].