About

Iowa State University Extension and Outreach’s Community and Economic Development (CED) unit developed the Community Indicators Program in 2013. This program has been successful at producing informative publications and sharing Census and other state data in accessible and visually compelling products through the curation of meaningful and timely data for use by students, community development specialists, local decision-makers and the public throughout the state.

The CED unit also delivers the Data Science for Public Good (DSPG) Young Scholars summer outreach program using the Community Learning through Data Driven Discovery (CLD3) framework. The DSPG program works with community and agency participants to identify potential data sources to gain insight into a broad set of community issues. Following are members of the Data team that will be presenting the workshop in October.

Instructors

Christopher J. Seeger, GISP, a Professor and Extension Specialist in the Department of Landscape Architecture is a certified Geographic Information Systems Professional (GISP) and Professional Landscape Architect (PLA Iowa #444), he has integrated his interests of geospatial technologies, data science, collaborative design technologies, and data visualization to develop local and current datasets that can be used as indicators in the community planning, design, and decision-making processes. Among other GIS classes, he teaches Web Mapping and Spatial Data Visualization. Seeger leads the Data Science for Public Good (DSPG) Young Scholars program at ISU.

Bailey Hanson, GISP, trained in geography and human computer interaction, Hanson is a Data Analyst III with ISU Extension and Outreach and co-directs the Community Indicators and Data for Decision Makers programs. Hanson provides expertise in data management, the development of Tableau visualizations and geospatial analysis. Hanson’s research has included work with data components of the seven Community Capitals (natural, cultural, human, social, political, financial, and built) and outreach utilizing indicators to support community decision making.

Jay Maxwell, trained as a data scientist, is a Data Analyst I with ISU Extension and Outreach. Maxwell provides expertise in the aspects of acquiring data such as population, employment and housing data using R (a software for statistical computing and graphics that helps data analysts standardize unstructured, messy data) and incorporating this information into databases or sharing through other spatial and tabular data formats. Additionally, Maxwell shares his skills with geospatial software teaching the ArcGIS Pro workshop.