The Geography Program is gearing up for their annual GIS (geographic information systems) Day. The theme this year is Geography Meets Humanities: A Focus on Social Justice. 

This year, the event is held on November 13th, and starts at 12 p.m. with the open house and grand opening of the Center for Applied Spatial Analysis (CASA) in Library Annex LX 3. 

One of the goals of CASA is to provide internships for students, workshops, and research opportunities with campus and community members.   
GIS Day, this year, will be bigger due to a California Humanities grant for the event. The event was planned by Dr. José R. Díaz-Garayúa, Geography Professor, and two Humanities Experts, Dr. Shannon Stevens, Communication Studies, and Dr. Brenda L. Ortiz Loyola. 

The grant has made a bilingual, Spanish and English, panel and podcast possible. 

Panelist speakers will be discussing the intersectionalities between geography, humanities, and social justice. Some topics include fair trade, the role of big data, air quality and GIS in social activism in both Spanish and English. 

As the only Human Geographer at Stan State, Dr. Díaz-Garayúa, Project Director, explained that the theme was chosen due to one of his areas of research being “inequalities,” as well as the large Hispanic population in the area.

“One of the things that I want is to try to bring more of the Spanish speaking community here and try to make a mark for the Hispanic community,” said Dr. Díaz-Garayúa. 

With 51.4 percent of Stan State’s student population identifying as Hispanic, Dr. Díaz-Garayúa wants to bring more accessible resources to this community and the surrounding Spanish-speaking communities.

Dr. Díaz-Garayúa hopes that, “People from the community can feel closer to us, not just the university, but the geography program, and the center [CASA]” and that the community becomes more interested in these topics and begin to call out the inequalities that they could be facing. 

The day will end with the screening of the documentary, El Cacao. 

For more information on the event, visit the GIS Day page.