Cartographic Education in Transition

S professional educators and researchers in cartography, we gather at professional meetings from time to time to exchange information and opinions. A frequently topic of discussion during these gatherings is how to design a cartographic curriculum for the needs and constraints of our times. We agreed with our peers that we live in challenging times. Not only are we in the midst of revolutions in technological capability and information management, but we also live in an era of fiscal restraint, globalization, and increasing public awareness of professional matters. It appears unlikely that any society before us has ever been confronted by as much ongoing and rapid change driven by technological development, advances in knowledge, and commercial interests. Our challenge as educators and researchers is to keep up. We need to identify the continually adjusting role of cartography in all these changes, and we must find ways to adopt and adapt trends and innovations so as to advance cartography. As educators, the questions we face include: • What should we teach today to prepare students for tomorrow? • How should we teach it? • Whom should we teach? • How is everybody else coping? In discussion with our colleagues, we identified a need to learn from each other by sharing more formally our experiences about the changing nature of cartographic education in universities. This led to the organization of a special session at the 1996 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Charlotte, North Carolina titled The University Cartographic Curriculum: An International Perspective—and subsequently, to this monograph. Our goal in organizing the monograph was to ask authors from around the world to share their thoughts and experiences about trends and transitions in cartographic education. We approached contributing authors by informing them that

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