Hello everyone!

We are excited to announce our 2008 Regional GIS Training at Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, TN on Tuesday, May 20, 2008 beginning at 8 AM Central and ending on Thursday, May 22, 2008 at 5pm. Tuition is free! The only cost to your station/office are travel expenses. Cookeville hotels are easily found around $65 per night. The Regional GIS Committee will meet on Friday morning following the training. The training is open to any interested R4 employee. Enrollment for other FWS, DOI, Federal, or State employees will be open on a space-available basis once Regional requests are accommodated.

If you are interested in attending, please send an e-mail to Jason Duke at jason_duke@fws.gov with the name, job title, office, phone, and e-mail of EACH person attending from your office. We need an accurate head count by April 16, 2008. Course lists will be e-mailed to everyone we have on record as of that date to allow you to pre-register for the course offerings. A detailed agenda will be sent at that time.

The training will open with a general 2 hour plenary session to be followed by multiple tracks of courses. We will focus on Geodatabases a lot in classes this year to help you transition to the Geodatabase model. There will be an Intro track, an Intermediate/Advanced Track, and a GPS track. Laura Pickens and Barry Wood will be teaching the NCTC Intro to GIS course for a full 2-day period.. All courses are hands on and will be taught using ArcGIS 9.2 and extensions. GPS units covered will primarily be Garmin and Trimble models. Other Inter/Adv topics include the use of Mr. SID, Blue Marble Geographics Geotransformer, and Erdas Imagine. We also have ESRI instructors teaching some courses and have a lot of great FREE training to offer. We will have NCTC instructors providing some of the training and the course content will differ from that of last year. We are targeting different training opportunities for all levels of GIS knowledge and skill.

This training is part of our overall Regional GIS efforts and, as such, is approved by the Regional Directorate. You must have supervisory approval to attend and your station/program is responsible for your travel.

This is the only training opportunity that will occur in Cookeville this fiscal year sponsored by the Tennessee Field Office and the ARD for Budget & Administration.

We look forward to seeing you in Cookeville!

Jason Duke, GIS & IT Specialist
USFWS
Cookeville, TN 38501
931-528-6481 ext.216 Phone
931-528-7075 Fax
jason_duke@fws.gov

and

Jackie Parrish, Assistant Regional Director for Budget & Administration
Southeast Region, US FWS
Atlanta, GA
(404) 679-4087