Mizuki Kawabata*, Rajesh Bahadur Thapa**, and Takashi Oguchi*
*Center for Spatial Information Science, The University of Tokyo, Japan
** Graduate School of Life and Environmental Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan
September, 2008
Cooperation among different fields of study is important in developing a systematic method of GIS education. We examined inter-field cooperation, particularly that between geography-related and computer/information-related fields for education programs at US colleges and universities that award GIS-related degrees or certificates. Academic fields were classified using ten major classes of the Dewey Decimal Classification system. In the 2007-08 academic year, about 40% of GIS education programs were based on cooperation between two or more different fields, and about 20% involved cooperation among more than three fields. Approximately 10% of GIS education programs were based on cooperation between geography-related and computer/information-related fields, most of which also involved some other fields in various disciplines. Inter-field cooperation in GIS education in the US is considerably more advanced than that in Japan.