The Geography Program is an active participant in a cooperative agreement between the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) and JMU. This agreement has resulted in the NGA developing project ideas for students and faculty to work on that are of interest to the NGA, and then arranging for NGA analysts and scientists to directly mentor and advise the students and faculty members working on those projects. In many cases, the results of these student projects have been of great interest to the NGA, and students and faculty have been asked to present briefs on them.

The Geospatial Semester is an innovative partnership between JMU and multiple school districts across Virginia where high school teachers collaborate directly with JMU faculty members to bring different geospatial technologies like GIS, GPS, and remote sensing into the classrooms. JMU faculty each have a set of schools that they visit once a month to support and teach current lessons, observe, and develop student projects. Students have the opportunity to earn dual-enrollment credit at JMU for the projects they complete in and outside of the classroom. Contact Bob Kolvoord for more information.

The College of Integrated Science and Engineering Industry Partners Program seeks to foster a meaningful and sustained partnership between students, faculty, staff, and industry leaders who share a common purpose of improving our world through the cultivation of integrated science, technology, and engineering.

Our faculty currently collaborate with a wide range of private-sector partners, ranging from larger companies like Verizon and MITRE to smaller, local businesses such as Vine and Fig and Trout Unlimited. Most of these collaborations focus on student involvement in addressing the challenges that these companies face. Our students benefit by being able to put their knowledge and skills to work on a real-world challenge, and our partners benefit from our students’ strong academic preparation and their willingness to think creatively yet pragmatically. Learn more.

The National Center for Rural Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education Outreach brings together James Madison University's (JMU) long-standing focus on teacher education with educators in rural settings across the United States. The initial emphasis of the Center is on helping teachers and students use geospatial technologies, such as geographic information systems (GIS), global positioning systems (GPS), and remote sensing, to help build their spatial reasoning and content knowledge in STEM areas. Contact Bob Kolvoord for more information.