GIS Education Center

The GIS Education Center is now part of Continuing Education, City College of San Francisco. Register for workshops by visiting Continuing Education and click the online registration button on the left side of their page. You can also can click the Enroll Now button on our Workshop page of this website.

Early Enrollment Appreciation Discount of $10 when you register up to ONE WEEK before the class begins.

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No. Workshop fees are the same regardless if you are an out-of-state or international student. In addition, no TOEFL scores or other special paper work are needed for international students.

You will need proficiency in using a Windows operating system. This includes opening and closing windows, navigating the screen by using the mouse, saving information and creating files and folders.

Yes. Continuing Education sets the refund policy so it's best to refer to their website for the latest information. Visit Continuing Education.

The Non-profit Tract will teach students GIS concepts, techniques, and workflows using web-based GIS and other mapping tools. Therefore, allowing students to develop and continue their work and projects without purchasing high-end desktop GIS products.

We are working on creating internship opportunities; this past semester we placed three students in nonpaying positions that provided experience and skills. You may contact the Director for other opportunities.

Since the beginning, the GIS Education Center has emphasized the provision of services that are in the best interests of our students. For example, our workshops are offered over the course of several weeks in order to allow students an opportunity to practice using ArcGIS, digest the information they acquire, and return to class with topics for discussion. We feel that this approach offers many advantages over that used by other institutions which focus on a "crash-course" approach (where information is given over two long, consecutive days). We've conducted surveys of our students and learned that this latter approach does not provide students with enough time to absorb new information or gain memorable hands-on experience using ArcGIS software.

Our workshops focus extensively on hands-on training.  Our students typically spend about two hours of each three-hour session working on lab exercises, preceded by a brief, introductory lecture and demonstration.  Our laboratory exercises are carefully designed to model efficient, industry-standard approaches to workflows and problem-solving techniques.  Also, our labs use real-world spatial data (e.g. from local municipalities) in order to effectively demonstrate real-world problems and solutions.

Another advantage of our workshops is that we emphasize a cross-disciplinary approach since, by its very nature, GIS technology is applicable to just about every major field today.  As such, we encourage networking and group exercises in our workshops in order to build professional relationships and to reinforce GIS concepts and techniques.

One quality of our workshops in which we take great pride is the fact that we like to have fun!  We recognize that learning new software such as ArcGIS andgeospatial theory and practice can be a bit intimidating and, admittedly, frustrating at times.  Through humor and patient encouragement, we support our students to the best of our ability with the goal of translating this approach into a fun and supportive learning environment that will excite you to explore further, ask questions and remember what you've learned. 

Yes. We will provide you with the necessary ArcGIS software.  However, it is your responsibility to transfer the data from our classroom to your personal computer using, for example, a portable flash drive.  Since GIS data sets tend to be quite large, we highly recommend that you purchase a flash drive with a capacity of at least 1GB.

We are in the process of developing a solution to store and host student work.

• ESRI ArcGIS Desktop

• ESRI ArcPad

• ESRI ArcGIS Server

• Google Earth Pro

• Safe FME

• Trimble Pathfinder Office