Geographer at Work: Frank Salmon, GIS Manager

Frank Salmon remembers to the day when he decided Geography was going to be his career. Frank had just taken his seat before his first Geography final exam at Gateway Community Technical College when the professor announced to the class that “any of you who liked this course and want to pursue this as a major at Southern Connecticut State, I will guarantee that you will have a career when you graduate.” Not that Frank really needed this persuasion; he had loved Geography since he was a child. This first Geography class simply articulated for him what he now believes he was meant to do. After that first Geography class, Frank decided that he would take only classes that would transfer to Southern Connecticut, where he would follow his undergraduate degree in Geography. He then planned to go on to earn a Master’s degree in graduate school. Frank excelled in his classes at Gateway and transferred to SCSU with an A average after graduating from Gateway in 1995. At Southern, Frank took the most challenging courses available not only in his major, but also in electives (SPSS, computer science, and statistics, to name a few) that he and his advisors believed would be beneficial for graduate work and beyond. During Frank’s junior year he took an internship at the New Haven City Planning office that turned into a part-time position as a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) technician. This was his first experience with GIS, but he saw right away that this fairly new technology had a lot of potential. In Frank’s senior year, he used GIS to help him with his research on the spatial patterns of diabetes in New Haven, Connecticut. On the strength of this research, he received Departmental Honors in Geography. Frank graduated from Southern Connecticut Magna Cum Laude in 1998. He then went on a full scholarship to graduate school at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Frank’s primary reason