Undergraduate cartographic (and geomatics/GIScience) education at North American universities

This paper discusses how the development and implementation of a compulsory, non-technical introductory undergraduate course which concentrates primarily on imparting the fundamental concepts and principles of Geomatics/GI Science has the potential to improve all levels of cartographic education. At the introductory level, it places cartography at the core of Geomatics/GIScience based upon the knowledge that it can contribute to GIS, remote sensing and other related spatial sciences; at the advanced level, it reduces the responsibility placed upon traditional introductory cartography courses to teach subject matter that is not unique to cartography, thus allowing for greater emphasis to be placed on contemporary cartographic concepts, techniques and research issues; and overall, it circumvents the problems associated with courses that attempt to teach fundamental concepts and applied technical skills at the same time (typically referred to as dual objectives courses), and addresses a number of the problems associated with the ‘education versus training’ debate.