Seton Hall University Uses PolicyMap in the Classroom

Seton Hall University Libraries purchased an Enterprise License to PolicyMap a year ago for the university community to encourage data literacy with GIS tools.  According to Dean John Buschman:

“University Libraries sought to provide faculty, graduate students and undergraduate students with a simple spatial analysis tool. PolicyMap was a practical choice to give our academic community access to demographic, health and economic variables.” stated Dr. John Buschman, Dean of Seton Hall’s University Libraries, “Student research utilizing this geographic tool will inform their subject knowledge as well as enhance their digital literacy and critical analysis skills.”

What started as a commitment to place-based, data-driven teaching techniques has become a full-fledged course in the School of Health and Medical Sciences’ Master of Healthcare Administration degree program.  Professor Anne Hewitt has crafted a course called “Managing Community and Population Health” with an assignment titled, “Vulnerable Populations:  Using PolicyMap for Population Health Analysis.”  The course assignment is part of The Population Health Management PolicyMap Project (PHM/PMP) grant awarded to Dr. Hewitt as part of the University’s Digital Humanities Initiative.  The award helped Dr. Hewitt to provide PolicyMap as a utility to all of her students, which has enabled them to visualize various health problems and to aid in planning, preventing and managing the at-risk health conditions associated with those problems.

At PolicyMap, we love sharing stories about PolicyMap’s use in the classroom.  We value that today’s learners and tomorrow’s practitioners are developing skills to use data, fact-based logic and spatial thinking.  Please let us know if you have a story to share about your students’ use of PolicyMap!