At this year’s Summer Faculty Institute, I presented on using PolicyMap to examine environmental justice issues in local Delaware.  Studying environmental justice communities with maps allows students to see several related social phenomena, including race and socio-economic status, layered with specific geographic areas that have disproportionate levels of environmental burdens.  The spatial patterns of race, socio-economic status, and pollution are not a coincidence, and have deep roots in industry, poverty, housing, race, and discrimination.  This presentation highlights one example drawn from the planned curriculum for a general education course on integrating spatial visualizations into social science analyses.  The curriculum, supported by a 2014-15 IT/CTAL Innovative Transformation Grant, is being developed for a course that will allow non-geography, non-social science students an opportunity to see the power of mapping in the social sciences without a sophisticated GIS background. The presentation is available via the link below, and the class will be taught in the Fall 2016 semester.  Stay tuned!

https://udcapture.udel.edu/events/sfi2015/?t=92116c82abf7c147f964c0bfdae049e1