Guest Speaker - April 7 colloquium

I want to extend a special invitation to students (this includes undergraduates and non-majors) who are considering a career in GIS to attend the April 7 colloquium. The speaker that day will be Kenneth Bennett who received his MS degree and is now the Information Technology Manager for Los Angeles. Kenneth came rather late to GIS, having earned his BA degree in English and World Literature at UCLA.  At Tennessee he heard his MS specializing in GIS and Transportation.  His talk will focus on how he moved from his MS degree to GIS consultant, to GIS manager for Los Angeles’ Registrar and Recorder, to his current position as Information Technology Manager.  If you are at all interested in a career in GIS, I encourage you to attend.  In addition, Kenneth will meet with students on Friday, April 8 at 9 AM. I will bribe your attendance with some goodies from Panera!  Here is the official blurb for Kenneth’s presentation:

Geography Colloquium

Programming, Projects, and People:  The Journey of a GIS Professional from Geography Student to Information Technology Manager

Mr. Kenneth Bennett

Information Technology Manager, Los Angeles, CA

April 7 at 3:40 PM

Lindsey Young Auditorium in Hodges Library

Speaker Bio. Mr. Bennett graduated from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville with an M.S. in Geography in 1998, where he concentrated on a range of topics, including transportation planning and modeling, business transportation and logistics, computer programming, and GIS application development.  The degree and experience he gained at UTK landed him a position at the GIS consulting firm, GIS/Trans, Ltd.  As a consultant from 1998 until 2004, Mr. Bennett worked on numerous GIS-Transportation projects in California, Arizona, and in Chile and Bolivia.  Those projects involved not only GIS design and development, but also strategic implementation planning for enterprise GIS.  A contract with Los Angeles County to develop an innovative GIS for precincting and redistricting led to being hired by the County’s Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk in 2004 to be their GIS Section Head, in which capacity he headed a multi-departmental effort to build an award-winning GIS-based Countywide Address Management System.  Success in GIS project management led to a promotion to the position of Information Technology Manager, which places him in charge over numerous election-critical systems, including district mapping, precinct consolidation, ballot layout, ballot tabulation, elect results mapping and reporting, and tally audit.  Mr. Bennett also holds a Bachelors of Arts degree in English and World Literature from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Bruce Ralston
Professor Emeritus
Department of Geography
University of Tennessee
Knoxville, TN 37996-0925
Phone: 865-974-6043
FAX: 865-974-6025