About Us

Welcome to the USC College’s online Graduate Program in Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIST).  

USC College is a highly regarded liberal arts college within a world-renowned research university. The College offers a wide variety of professional certificates and degrees, including two innovative programs in Geographic Information Science (GIS), the GIST Master of Science and the GIST Graduate Certificate Program. These GIST graduate programs are offered in "distance learning" format created to mesh with the demanding schedules of resident USC graduate students and working professionals for whom campus-based studies are not an option. The GIST distance-learning courses may be used to satisfy degree requirements for both resident and off-campus degree programs.

In the past decade, Geographic Information Science (GIS) has grown exponentially. GIS systems are in use throughout the world and the demand for professionals trained in their use is expanding in the United States, Canada, much of Europe and parts of Asia.  Currently, the number of people with expertise in GIS cannot possibly meet the surge coming from government, non-profits and the private marketplace.   Recognizing this demand, USC College established in 1996 the USC GIS Research Lab. It was designed to support the research needs of our faculty and the GIS training needs of our graduate students.

We understood that these residence degree programs would not meet the needs of busy professionals who were unlikely to move to Los Angeles for graduate study.  The internet emerged as an answer and in 1998 we developed an online graduate certificate program in GIS as a collaborative enterprise with the UNIGIS (link) International Network.  It was one of the first online GIS graduate programs in the country and today it remains one of the few online programs directly linked to an active GIS research lab.

For many years, the graduate certificate program met the needs of working professionals and researchers. However, the wave of technological innovation continued. Today more advanced training is required to match the demand from the public and private sector, and the number of skilled GIS professionals remains limited. The USC Masters of Science degree matches the needs of today’s researchers and professionals, equipping them with the fundamental science and skills to cope with increasing data complexity and more sophisticated applications.