I am currently a Teaching Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography and the Environment at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. I teach classes in Spatial Data Science, GIS, programming, web mapping, spatial databases, cartography, spatial modeling and analysis, data acquisition and integration.
I see my disciplines, Geographic Information Science (GIS) and Spatial Data Science as the intersections of Geography and Computer Science from which I have earned my degrees. Therefore, I want students to be able to think geographically that is, to critically consider the dynamic spatial and temporal issues of a problem and to consider how scale and distance impact our human and physical environments. I also want them to think computationally that is, to break problems into smaller components in a logical sequence and consider how a representation in a computer is related to the object in the real world. These skills understanding spatial relations and logical problem solving are critical skills in our discipline and in the wider world.
My teaching and research interests include Volunteered Geographic Information, Space-Time Spatial Analysis and Modeling, GIS and Geography Education, and GIS and Society including Digital Places and Web GIS.
Dave Parr 