The GIS Certification Institute (GISCI) grants a certificate to professionals that demonstrate a portfolio of education, experience, and industry contributions. As part of the GISCI continuing education requirements, you can attend conferences, workshops, or take classes.
Continuing Education Requirements of GISCI
This year, there have been lots of virtual opportunities as COVID-19 has interrupted most onsite events. We found the Esri Virtual UC to be very informative. The advantage being that we could watch any number of precorded presentations in any order that met our schedule. This is the upside for all of the virtual events.
New GIS applied courses
So what are your options for courses to fulfill the GISCI education ‘6 point requirement’? Colleges have also been active at bringing curriculum online. But the content is likely topics you have taken before like: ‘Intro to Spatial Analysis’. The various vendors offer software training like Esri Academy which makes it easy to learn the new software releases. If you want to go the project based learning route, you can take classes by SME’s working in industry at Bootcamp GIS. Earn your GISCI education points with portfolio building skills like:
- Building a wildfire data server on AWS
- Writing Python Data Science models for GIS
- Creating a COVID-19 dashboard
- Designing a GIS strategic plan
As a peer education platform, they also offer the opportunity for any GISP to author a course. This contributes to a growing body of educational content from people around the world. Check out the opportunities to make your education count with practical skills that keep you GISCI recertified.
GISCI Requirements
There are almost 10,000 professionals that have gone through the certifying process by GISCI to demonstrate the credentials of having an accomplished body of work and experience. This involves a minimum of 4 years of experience possessing project expertise and industry volunteerism. It costs $450 to apply for the entire review and exam process. You will then show your continuing education courses to keep your certification current. GIS is involved in a lot of IoT so think strategically on which current skills you can add to your portfolio to be an upper echelon GIS professional.