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University of Texas University of Texas Libraries

GIS & Geospatial Data Services

UTL Map & Geospatial Collections Explorer Fellowship

Fellowship Details

The UT Libraries Map & Geospatial Collections Fellowship is designed to encourage students and faculty at the University of Texas at Austin to develop scholarly and creative projects that utilize or enhance the Libraries’ map and geospatial data resources. These geospatial resources have contributed to the scholarly and creative output of UT scholars for decades and it is the goal of this fellowship to preserve, augment, and promote these assets so that they can be made more useful and accessible than ever before.

Call for Proposals

Click the button below to view/download the 2024 Call for Proposals for full details about the Fellowship including information about requirements, proposal evaluation criteria, and submission guidelines.

Proposal Form

Click the link below to complete the 2024 Proposal Form.

Info Session

Click the link below to view the recording of the UTL MGCE Fellowship Info Session that took place on Tuesday 9/17 from 1:00 to 2:00pm in the PCL Scholars Lab and on Zoom

Eligibility

  • Students at all levels and from all disciplines who are currently enrolled in a degree earning program at the University of Texas at Austin at time of proposal submission.
  • Faculty and post-docs with an active paid appointment at the University of Texas at Austin at time of proposal submission.

Student and faculty/post-doc proposals are considered as separate submission categories and will be judged independently, with the intention of awarding one $1500 fellowship per category per year. Award winners will have their work featured in one or more UT Libraries repositories.

Timeline

Call for Proposals released:

Monday, August 26th, 2024
Information Session: Tuesday, September 17th, 2024
Extended proposal submission deadline: Monday, October 14th 2024 by 11:59pm
Winners contacted: Early November
Winners publicly announced: GIS Day (November 20, 2024)

Sign Up for Fellowship Announcements

If you want to stay up to date about UTL MGCE Fellowship announcements, visit https://utlists.utexas.edu/sympa/info/gis-users to subscribe to the UT GIS user email list.

Questions?

Please contact utl-gis@austin.utexas.edu if you have any questions about the Fellowship that are not addressed in this guide or in the call for proposals.

2023 UTL MGCE Fellowship Recipients

Student Fellowship: Ethan Plevak
Mapping and Analyzing Patterns of Demographic Change in the City of Austin, 1900-1940
This project aims to create new narratives about demographic change in the greater Austin area between 1900 and 1940. Through georeferencing historical maps and enhancing them with US Census attribute data, Ethan plans on creating thematic visualizations of demographic change in Austin during a period of increasing racial and economic segregation. He is specifically interested in visualizing changes and continuities in the demographic composition of Austin's districts and neighborhoods as well as changes in occupational status, land ownership, and population density. The goal of this work is to enrich the holdings of the UT Libraries' geospatial collections and provide a new lens through which these maps can be viewed, especially through a lens of racial justice.
Faculty Fellowship: Dr. Elizabeth Catlos
Exploring Himalayan Lineaments in ArcGIS to Improve Hazard Mapping
The project idea is based on the 2015 Gorkha (Nepal) earthquake, which was unusual to the geologic community as its magnitude (7.9) was lower than forecasted. An extensive study of the earthquake indicated that it occurred between two lineaments, cryptic linear features that require more documentation and information. This project aims to create an ArcGIS Himalayan hazard map and an ArcGIS StoryMap, documenting these features throughout the range and identifying their role in controlling the region's earthquakes.

2022 UTL MGCE Fellowship Recipient

For full details about the awarding of the 2022 UTL MGCE Fellowships view the UT Libraries press release.

Student Fellowship: Stephanie Zeller
Project Description: This project will leverage multi-modal engagement methods and transdisciplinary, practice-led research to create an interactive exhibit in partnership with the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) focused on biodiversity loss due to climate change in the Hawaiian islands. This exhibit will bring together physical maps and map scans from the PCL collection with a physical model; hand-drawn prints of specific plant and animal species at risk; photographs; and digital visualizations of E3SM Earth System Model climate simulation data of the Hawaiian island region, encoded with custom, hand-made glyph artifacts. Each piece of art will be linked to specific locations on the PCL’s map of the Hawaiian islands.

2021 UTL MGCE Fellowship Recipients

For full details about the awarding of the 2021 UTL MGCE Fellowships view the UT Libraries press release.

Student Fellowship: Bailey Ohlson
Bailey plans on studying critical watersheds in Puerto Rico (PR) and their downstream fresh-water reservoirs in order to quantify sediment accumulation rates and identify environmental controls on erosion. Bailey plans on using maps from the Perry-Castañeda Library Map Collection to characterize past land use in PR and determine their influence on sediment accumulation. She also plans on publishing a database of bathymetric data in the UT Library repositories with pre-existing bathymetric data from government agencies as well as new data she will be collecting using a bathymetric hydro-drone.
Faculty Fellowship: Dr. Ginny Catania
The threat from sea-level rise to the Texas coast, which produces ~$400 billion in economic value, is increasingly visible with widespread impacts across human, built, and natural environments. This project plans to build a map of coastal change for the State of Texas to enable detection of the regions of greatest change (hotspots). By studying hotspot locations in conjunction with environmental data, we can understand the processes responsible for change and how such regions might be impacted from future sea level rise. Map data will be superimposed with demographic data to determine the coastal populations most at risk from sea level and associated threats.

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