The Dangermond Fellowship - National Audobon Society & ESRI (Chicago)

Who: Now in its second century, Audubon is dedicated to protecting birds and other wildlife and the habitat that supports them. Audubon’s mission is engaging people in bird conservation on a hemispheric scale through science, policy, education and on-the-ground conservation action. By mobilizing and aligning its network of Chapters, Centers, State and Important Bird Area programs in the four major migratory flyways in the Americas, the organization will bring the full power of Audubon to bear on protecting common and threatened bird species and the critical habitat they need to survive.

What: The Dangermond Fellowship is an exciting, paid opportunity provided through the partnership between National Audubon Society and Environmental Systems Research Institute (ESRI). This prestigious fellowship is designed with the aim to foster the next generation of leaders in the enterprise GIS, science, and nonprofit/conservation sectors. Throughout the year, Fellows will receive extensive and immersive training in the full ArcGIS platform and will visit both the ESRI campus in Redlands, CA and Audubon’s headquarters in New York City. The position is a one-year commitment and starts in June 2019 until June 2020. Fellows will work full time over the summer to attend trainings, the ESRI User Conference, and spend time on a GIS-related project with a unique, local Audubon field location (center or an office that is closest to your residence). In the fall and spring, Fellows will work part-time to accommodate for the academic semester. The goals of the program are to provide Fellows with enterprise systems, conservation, science, and applied technologies exposure in a GIS department that is at the forefront of the GIS enterprise landscape. Experience with GIS server technologies, cloud servers, database management systems, application development, and account management will be gained through hands-on application of skills and knowledge with a professional team. Through the fellowship, Audubon wants to bring together individuals from diverse disciplines, including but not limited to geodesy, computer science, cartography, human geography, physical geography, climate science, photogrammetry, remote sensing, and geospatial information science. As a Fellow, your potential to further GIS work in connection with Audubon’s conservation strategy will be a strong consideration during the selection process.
This includes:

• Advancing research in the field of geographic information systems and science applied to wildlife and bird conservation
• Expanding and strengthening the relevance of geographic information science across Audubon’s network, especially in the intersection of GIS, conservation policy, climate change, coastal planning, and land use/cover change monitoring

• Promotion of effective and ethical use of geographic information data and technologies

• Building relationships around GIS science and applications in order to foster multi-disciplinary geospatial research and education across the Audubon network and key partners   Students from colleges across the United States are invited to apply. Students must submit a resume and cover letter to be considered. 

Under the supervision of a mentor from the Enterprise GIS team, the Fellow will learn how to:


• Manage projects using GIS to help Audubon meet its conservation goals.

• Train and educate users throughout the Audubon network and also be the initial contact for technical questions about GIS.

• Develop web maps, mobile applications, and story maps for informing Audubon staff, partners, and the public.

• Create and steward authoritative spatial data in an enterprise database management system.

• Build tools using Python (including Jupyter notebooks) and ModelBuilder to support geoprocessing services in applications.

• Create and publish web services using ArcGIS Enterprise and ArcGIS Online. 

Qualifications:

• Interest or experience in the field of environmental science and wildlife conservation.
• Completion of at least two years as an undergraduate student or one year as a graduate student in a program focused on or related to GIS, Environmental Studies, Conservation, Sustainability, Computer Science, or Ecology.

• Good interpersonal skills and a desire to lead using an advanced GIS toolkit to solve conservation issues.
• Must have a strong understanding of cartography, GIS, and web GIS. 

• Understanding of and ability to apply scientific analyses and models. 

• Experience working with policy administrators to prepare GIS datasets for public release.

• Ability to effectively synthesize complex information.



Preferred Qualifications:

• Experience with satellite remote sensing and/or drone imagery.

• Coursework or interest in enterprise GIS including geodatabase design, ESRI APIs, geoprocessing, Python (including Jupyter notebooks), server technologies, and SQL.

• Deep understanding of spatial analytical tools and methods.
• Experience in software development or programming especially in JavaScript, R Statistical Language, IDL, scripting languages, HTML, CSS, and various mapping languages (Arcade).

• Experience with AI, machine learning, and cognitive services.
• Experience manipulating complex data into understandable visualizations.

• Ability to read and/or converse in other languages (e.g. Spanish, French, Portuguese).

Find the full posting and apply here.