Growing the New GEOINT Generation
Written by David Burpee
GIF 2009 Volume: 7 Issue: 5 (October)
And Small Companies Develop Geospatial Skills.
“USGIF has a significant role in providing leadership with respect to mentoring,” said Keith Masback, USGIF president and board member, “and it all rests on our dedication for training and tradecraft.”
A keystone of USGIF’s formal training opportunities is its accreditation program, which Masback describes as an effort to identify and meld disparate disciplines that were taught in universities but not connected. “We put together a core set of courses that cover the requisite skills that would be included in GEOINT,” he said, “and articulated how they should be taught and then added a capstone course where students would be able to demonstrate their understanding and mastery of the idea of GEOINT. This, in a nutshell, describes our accreditation program.”
The University of Missouri at Columbia, Penn State University, George Mason University and the University of Texas at Dallas have been accredited, with several others in the pipeline.
“The neat thing about the accreditation program is that it is not one-sizefits- all. For instance, the Penn State offering is online, Missouri is an undergraduate program, and George Mason will offer a certificate program that with the addition of a few more courses would lead to a master’s degree,” Masback said. “We want to grow the program and are excited about its expansion in flexible ways to meet university and student needs, but the bottom line is that when the government or a company sees a potential employee walk in the door with a USGIF certificate, they can be assured that he or she ‘gets’ GEOINT.”
This year was highlighted with the first students completing their accredited programs: Two from Missouri and six from Penn State graduated and received the USGIF certificate. More than 200 students are in the pipeline across the four accredited university programs.
GEOINT 101
Masback also cited the GEOINT 101 program as another aspect of mentoring through formal training. Noting that the term GEOINT meant different things to different people, he said GEOINT 101 was aimed at addressing that issue.
GEOINT 101, he explained, was offered in partnership with the Intelligence and Security Academy (ISA).
It “was designed as a one-day course where industry, academia and government organizations can have their students attend and be assured that when they walk out they will have a common understanding of the history and fundamental pieces of GEOINT and will be able to apply them in their workplace. We are developing a classified version, and we can easily expand it by adding depth to a two-day or longer course.”
GEOINT 101 is accessible via www.usgif.org, and there is no requirement to be a USGIF member or be sponsored by a member company to apply.
“GEOINT 101 is a super mentoring tool that fits perfectly with our goal to improve education and training in the national security arena,” said Mark Lowenthal, chief executive officer of ISA. “The program gives a student a quick boost to understand GEOINT and how it fits into the overall U.S. defense, intelligence and political structure.”
As an informal mentoring opportunity, Masback cited the USGIF Young Professionals program as a way to quickly network and expand contacts. He explained that seasoned professionals had many opportunities to network, but that “when you look at crosscommunity opportunities for junior people to meet and exchange ideas, there are none. So we felt there was a void, and last year, two of our junior staff members took the lead to start our young professionals’ network.”
The first event in Ballston, Va., drew about 80 young professionals from across the intelligence community and USGIF member companies. After several informal gatherings, a second event was held in conjunction with the recent ESRI Users Conference in San Diego.
The attendance and acceptance of these programs are an acknowledgement of the need, and the positive feedback is encouragement to continue, Masback said. “What we hope to do next is develop one-on-one opportunities that combine the experience of seasoned professionals with the world view of more junior people so they can see imagery, imagery intelligence and geospatial information in the context of GEOINT. Mentoring should be more than a one-time interesting conversation, and instead should be the development of a situation that could become a lifetime relationship.”
Max Baber, who recently became USGIF’s first academic director, has identified professional mentoring as a key priority. “Effective mentoring is an essential component associated with preparing young GEOINT professionals for successful careers. Ours is a dynamic and rapidly growing field, and mentoring builds on the foundation of GEOINT knowledge and skills developed by students graduating from USGIF accredited geospatial intelligence certificate programs at universities throughout the United States,” he said.
BOOT CAMP
Another form of mentoring for GEOINT professionals is being promulgated by the Advanced Technical Intelligence Center for Human Capital Development (ATIC). Located in Dayton, Ohio, ATIC’s mission is to address critical human capital and technological development needs within the U.S. intelligence community and related industries.
“We offer retraining programs and continuing education programs, but we are broadly focused primarily on partnerships with industry, academia and government to help restructure the work force within the area of our regional partners,” said Hugh Bolton, ATIC chief executive officer.
“When we bring students in, we make sure internships are available with our partners. The students finish with the requisite courses and security clearances, but they also have hands-on experience in our facility with live data at all levels of security. An exposure to what is really going to happen when they enter the IC in an analyst or support function is a key to mentoring.”
One program sponsored by the center is a 10-week intensive course called GEOINT Boot Camp. In addition, there were more than 30 GEOINT courses under ATIC sponsorship, the vast majority taught by industry and government partners. “Partners are also committed to bringing in students trough mentoring programs so they can help the individual and also gain information before making their hiring decisions,” he said. “We get interns nominated by companies,” Bolton continued, “and also have people who come in off the street because they have heard about our program. We have a very aggressive program to network and review these people in advance of their participation in the program to be reasonably sure that if we graduate them they have a good chance they will get a job. If they are not going to get a job, then we are wasting everyone’s time and not fulfilling our promises to the regions.”
To meet a growing demand, Bolton said ATIC was in discussion with a number of areas, such as Huntsville, Ala.; San Antonio, Texas; and Omaha, Neb.; as well as locations in Colorado, Maryland and West Virginia.
Classes in Dayton are also available online, and as other regions become active, they also will provide students and instructors to the online effort, he said. “We want to import/ export courses across regions as a way to share the burden and have everyone benefit from all the available knowledge,” Bolton explained.
ATIC also sponsors a range of other initiatives, including a certificate program of evening classes in partnership with colleges and universities, an associate degree program that can be grown into a bachelor’s degree, and an MBA program with a concentration in cybersecurity.
“We also have programs in development through the doctoral level,” he said, “and if a particular region has a specific requirement, we can tailor boot camps or shorter programs that specifically focus on their needs.” Total graduates, Bolton added, have so far exceeded 100, with enrollment this year expected to peak at about 200. Additionally, ATIC offers short courses in continuing education and professional development.
STUDENT OUTREACH
GeoEye, a satellite remote sensing company, has its eye on developing young professionals to serve the IC and the larger GIS community.
Mark Brender, GeoEye vice president for corporate communications, pointed to the GeoEye Foundation as an innovative mentoring tool. He said the foundation, formed in 2007, was a separate entity from the company, but the company provided its assets. The foundation makes scholarship monetary awards, and a foundation employee advisory committee makes imagery awards.
“We felt we had an obligation to train college students how to use commercial satellite images and also to provide them with imagery if needed for their research projects to succeed,” he said.
For students, high resolution imagery is expensive, he explained, and the foundation is a way to help students reduce costs while expanding the use of GeoEye’s imagery archives for projects such as climate change, border security, and other topics related to specific areas of the Earth’s surface.
The company had also established agreements with George Mason University and the University of Missouri for annual $5,000 scholarships over the next five years for a rising senior.
Brender added that to leverage other work being done in the community, the GeoEye Foundation had made a special effort to reach out to those schools with programs certified by the USGIF. “As the USGIF certification program grows, so will our outreach to the participating universities,” he said. “This is a great situation where everyone wins.”
Sharon Devonshire, GeoEye senior training specialist, said she liked the scholarship program because the school, not GeoEye or the foundation, picked the winner. “The primary criteria we asked them to consider was a passion for mapping and geospatial technologies and the geospatial information profession,” she said. “Grades are important, but passion is the key.”
GeoEye’s mentoring efforts extend to communities, schools and students to prepare young people to work in the IC or GIS industry, Devonshire said. “We are providing advice to Virginia elementary and secondary education planners, because state officials want to know the kinds of things that need to be taught to grow future employees in this industry.”
COMPANY PROTÉGÉS
One company that represents a total approach to mentoring is Raytheon, which participates in the Department of Defense mentor-protégé program.
“We have a couple of things that we see in play with the DoD program,” said Guy DuBois, vice president of operational technologies and solutions for Raytheon’s intelligence and information systems business, and the chief executive officer of Raytheon UTD.
“First, like everybody else, we want to do as much as we can to help build the industrial base,” DuBois said. “So much of what has happened in the GIS world has happened in small companies with great innovative technologies, and the issue has been not the technology itself but how do you bring that technology to market. What we have found out is that often the way to do that is to link a small company with a big company that has integration and other capabilities.
“The second part is that we are a profit-making company, and we believe the program is also essential from a customer strength point of view,” he continued. “It helps us build deeper and broader ties to our customer base as well as provide us with insight into what else is going on in the technology world.”
DuBois added that Raytheon’s mentoring also included commitment to a diverse work force, which allowed multiple inputs to solve corporate problems. The company has several mentoring programs with minority professional engineer groups and universities to reach as many organizations as possible to help diversify the work force as well as give individuals opportunities in a big company like Raytheon.
“We are committed to technical and scientific education, and sponsor a number of very big technical programs,” he said. “One is called MathMovesU, which is at the junior high level to get kids excited about math and its practical applications. Another one is called FirstRobotics, which is to get high school kids really excited about engineering and the technical aspects of development. So whether it is mentor-protégé or MathMovesU or FirstRobotics or one of our diversity outreach programs, our goals are the same. Build the industrial base, build the technical competence and provide a best solution to our customers.”
DuBois acknowledged the USGIF mentoring efforts. “I think their programs are extremely helpful,” he said. “They sponsor a number of interns, they have scholarships, and just the concept of promoting the nature of the application of GIS to real-world problems really has taken the industry to new dimensions.”
Greg Byles, executive vice president, sales, for Global Technology Resources Inc. (GTRI), lauded the value of the DoD mentorprotégé program.
“We have worked with Raytheon for a few years,” Byles said, “and we have grown significantly over that time. This program is directly tied to eliminating a lot of growing pains and helped us get from point A to point B. I can attribute and measure this program directly to our bottom line, which is very unique because it is hard to do that in many ways.”
Byles noted that GTRI was now working with other small companies as part of its own mentor-protégé program. He said they were also engaged with the local education system in terms of donating resources and teachers toward math programs.
Masback perhaps summed up the impetus behind the diverse and vibrant mentoring initiatives in the IC and GIS communities with this observation: “If we are going to promulgate the idea of geospatial intelligence, we are going to have to grow the first generation, to borrow a phrase, of GEOINT ‘natives’ as opposed to GEOINT ‘immigrants,’ which most of us are. To do this, it is incumbent on all of us to provide formal training, informal networking and one-on-one traditional mentoring experiences.” ♦
