CGA Members in the News

Kristie Blanchard, Social Studies Department Chair for Bacon Academy and AP Human Geography Teacher, was presented "The Outstanding Geography Teacher of 2010 for the New England Region of NESTVAL." NESTVAL is the New England-St. Lawrence Valley Geographers Association. Kristie received the award at NESTVAL's Annual Conference held October 29 and October 30 at the University of Connecticut. Kristie was chosen for the award for leadership in geoliteracy and working with students in and outside of the classroom. William DeGrazia, co-coordinator of the Connecticut Geographic Alliance, had the privilege of presenting Kristie, one of his former CCSU graduate students, with this prestigious award.

Tracy DeGrazia, working for the City of New Britain, and her students at New Britain High School won Honorable Mention in the “Solving an Environmental Problem” category with their “New Britain 2010 Health Education Lead Poisoning Project.” The award was given by the Connecticut Governor’s Geospatial Information Systems Council Education and Outreach Working Group. Tracy has helped for the past seven years with the Connecticut Geographic Bee in a variety of capacities and she is a CGA Teaching Consultant.

Speaking of the GIS Outreach group, Thad Dymkowski, who works for the City of Newington, coordinated a very successful GIS Day on November 17 during Geography Awareness Week. More than 125 students, teachers, and geospatial technology leaders from across the state attended the event held at the Torp Theatre on the campus of Central Connecticut State University in New Britain.

Jason Hine, Maritime History and Social Studies teacher at East Lyme High School, is mapping the voyages of The Charles W. Morgan (whaleship), beginning with the first voyage (1841-1845) and tracing all of her steps. He has done this by going through the Morgan’s logbooks and creating an Excel spreadsheet with a variety of data fields, including latitude and longitude. The MAGIC staff at UConn is then creating Google Earth maps to go along with his project. Jason is in the process of becoming a CGA Teaching Consultant.

If you or a colleague has achieved a notable moment in geography education, please send the news to Bill DeGrazia at BDGeoTC@aol.com for inclusion in a future CGA newsletter.