The Award Subcommittee of the UCGIS Education Committee is pleased to announce that the winner of the 2007 UCGIS Education Award is Duane Marble, Emeritus Professor of Geography at The Ohio State University.

Dr. Marble has made an outstanding contribution to geographic education, and is one of the founding fathers of geographic information systems education. In his succession of appointments at the University of Oregon, University of Pennsylvania, Northwestern University, SUNY at Buffalo and The Ohio State University, he has mentored over eighteen PhD students and more than forty MA/MSc students. Many of these students have become successful geographers and GIS&T educators in their own right, while others have gone on to work at developments that have become the core of modern geographic information systems technology.

In 1998, Duane instigated and became the chair of the UCGIS Model Curricula Task force that created the first major report (Strawman Report: Model Curricula ) on the undergraduate curriculum project that has evolved into the UCGIS Body of Knowledge. The resulting document owes a great deal to his experience, insight and initial vision.

However, long before this effort, he recognized the need for international, coordinated efforts in GIS education and in the 1980s organized a series of workshops that brought together for the first time university educators from around the world to share and discuss strategies. Much of the international collaboration that we now see owes its origin to meetings at one or other of these workshops. Also in the 1980s and early 1990s, the raster GIS teaching software system OSU Map-for-the-PC (developed with Jay Sandhu and Sherry Amundson) was used in over two hundred universities around the world.

In his publications, Duane has a record of major contributions to GIScience & Technology education beginning as early as the 1960s. His 1968 co-edited volume (with Brian Berry) (Spatial Analysis: a Reader in Statistical Geography), published in 1968 was one of the founding documents in geography’s ‘quantitative revolution’ and it remains a worthwhile read for all those working with spatial data. In the 1980s, he had co-edited (with Donna Peuquet and Hugh Calkins) one of the earliest published works in GIS&T (Basic Readings in Geographic Information Systems, later reprinted as Introductory Readings in Geographic Information Systems). This collection of papers served as a primary resource of GIS&T concepts for many students.

Duane has also published GIS&T education materials in numerous scientific and public outlets, including a series of thoughtful discussions the widely read ArcNews, that have been influential in the industry. These articulate his ‘pyramid’ industry structure model and communicate his concern that educators are largely ignoring the need to maintain the structured and rigorous curricula necessary to produce a new generation of researchers and developers.

Duane has previously received an Honors award from the Association of American Geographers, a Legend in Leadership award from ESRI, a Certificate of Honor from the Academy of Sciences of the People's Republic of China, and the Aangeenbrug Distinguished Career Award from the Geographic Information Systems and Science speciality group of the AAG.

These accomplishments are the educational highlights of a long and distinguished career, but Duane’s dedication extends beyond his publications, his vision of GIS&T education, his projects, his education workshops, and even his students. His ideas are integrated in many ways into the day to day concepts and use of contemporary GIS. With the cooperation of the Association of American Geographers, Duane has established the Marble Fund for Geographic Science that supports a series of student–oriented awards to encourage quality work in geographic information science.