Esri

esri badge-1I worked at Esri from 2011-2019. My role was leader of the small team that’s responsible for the success of Esri’s education customers. Of the approximately 350,000 organizations worldwide that license Esri technology, about 80,000 are higher education institutions, schools, academic libraries, museums, and research institutions. The “education sector” accounts for about 1 million ArcGIS users. A special focus is the two thousand colleges and universities that maintain Higher Education Institution licenses that provide virtually unlimited access to the ArcGIS platform to students, faculty, and staff members.

Some highlights of my 8-year tour of duty in Redlands CA:

  1. Following Penn State’s lead, I convinced Jack Dangermond to establish a program of Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) that attracted more than 200,000 students between 2014-2019.
  2. Following Jack’s announcement of Esri’s participation in President Obama’s ConnectED initiative, I help our team secure corporate support for a sustained program of curriculum development, teacher professional development, and mentoring. The ConnectED initiative led to the ArcGIS for Schools Bundle, which is now available free to public, private, and home schools and school clubs worldwide.
  3. I oversaw my team’s expansion from eight employees in 2011 to fifteen in 2019. A priority for that growth was to add technical depth by recruiting what Esri calls “solution engineers.” That change greatly increased the team’s value to users.
  4. I visited and shared thoughts with educators, students and administrators at about 100 higher education institutions.
australia_storymap

Click the thumbnail to open the story map in a new window.

That fourth item involved a fair bit of travel. The thumbnail at left is linked to a StoryMap of one of my business trips. From September 20 through October 2, 2013 I met with representatives of seven leading Australian universities and one TAFE (comparable to the American community college system). A representative of Esri Australia accompanied me at each stop. I also met with Esri Australia staff at their headquarters in Brisbane to discuss education strategy.

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