Hello all, my name's David Sablan and I am starting my third semester here in the master's program. I have a background in urban planning, my bachelors degree is in Urban and Regional Planning from Cal Poly, Pomona, and after school I worked for 6 years in the Planning Division of a suburb north of Sacramento, currently I am located in Alameda, CA. My experience with GIS prior to enrolling in this program was fairly limited, I had been introduced to ArcView 3.somethingarather in school and learned its basic principles for class assignments. In 2009-2010 I went through the Professional Development Certificate program in GIS at SF State, where I had some hands on training with more up to date GIS software, which included a brief introduction to ArcIMS, which I've completely forgotten. My goals for this entire program are to remain in government, using GIS for land use planning or being a part of a municipality's GIS department. However I am about to start volunteering with a non-profit organization here in Oakland that provides community building support and advocacy for low-income neighborhoods and am interested to learn about the role GIS plays in the organization's research and policy analysis.
You can e-mail me at: dsablan@usc.edu