PrintGeography 882
See the Syllabus for the current instructor.
- Dr. Mark Corson (Fall 2 and Summer)
- Mr. Steve Handwerk (Fall 1 and Spring 1)
- Dr. Gregory A. Thomas
- Dr. Michael L. Thomas (Spring 2)
Dr. Mark Corson
(Fall 2 and Summer)
Mark Corson has been a professional educator for over 30 years. Mark is a Professor Emeritus of Geography at Northwest Missouri State University. Through a cooperative agreement with Penn State he authored and teaches "Geographic Foundations of Geospatial Intelligence" as the foundation course for the Penn State Graduate Certificate Program in Geospatial Intelligence. Mark received his Bachelor of Science degree in Government from the University of San Francisco and his Master’s and Doctoral Degrees in Geography from the University of South Carolina. He also has a Master of Strategic Studies from the US Army War College. Mark began his teaching career in the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering at the US Military Academy at West Point, New York. Mark specializes in military and political geography. As a faculty member in the Emergency and Disaster Management Program at Northwest, Mark also taught: "Disaster Response and Recovery," "Emergency Management Planning," "Vulnerability and Mitigation," "Principles of Humanitarian Relief" and "Homeland Security and Defense."
Mark Corson also retired as a brigadier general in the US Army Reserve with 31 years of service. In his early career during the Cold War, he served in Germany and US as an armor officer. In the Army Reserve, he served as a transportation, logistics, and sustainment officer. He served in Kosovo in 2001 and commanded the Theater Movement Control Battalion in Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom 1. Mark returned from a second tour in Iraq in April 2011 having served as the senior sustainment commander of US Forces Iraq in command of the 5000 Soldiers, Airman, and Sailors and 6500 contractors in the103d Expeditionary Sustainment Command. Mark's last military job was as the J4 (Wartime) US Forces Korea.
Mark can be reached by phone at: (816) 294-2614. For email, please use the course email system in Canvas or mwc11@psu.edu (link sends email). You can also email him at mcorson@me.com (link sends email).
Meet Mark Corson, instructor of GEOG 882 (1:00 minutes).
MARK CORSON: Hi. My name is Mark Corson. I'm a professor of geography. I've been with the World Campus for 10 years now. I'm a graduate of the University of San Francisco on an Army ROTC scholarship in 1983. So, I have 31 years of military experience, 11 years active, 20 reserve, back in the Cold War and the good old days of the Cold War, but also, I have experience as a senior officer in Iraq, two tours in Iraq, plus Kosovo. I've been able to take that military experience along with my academic experience and basically put the two together. And the result is that I've become very interested in geospatial intelligence. I love teaching geographic foundations of geospatial intelligence, because we have so many practitioners, but we also have so many folks who want to get into the business, that I learn as much from you as certainly you'll learn from me. And we'll learn from each other. And so, I'm really stoked about seeing you in the virtual classroom and learning together.
Mr. Steve Handwerk
(Fall 1 and Spring 1)
- Mobile: (717) 303-7962 (The country code for the United States is 1)
- Office phone: ( 717) 761-4758 (The country code for the United States is 1)
- FAX: (814) 865-3191 (The country code for the United States is 1. Please send the Fax to my attention. Please note that a Fax is sent to the State College Campus, then forwarded to me as an email. If possible, send a scanned copy to me via email for faster turnaround.)
- Email: Please use the course email system (see the Inbox tab in Canvas).
- Availability: Please call or email me to schedule a time that is convenient for you.
Meet Mr. Steve Handwerk, instructor of GEOG 882 (1:41 minutes).
STEPHEN HANDWERK: I'm Steve Handwerk. I'm an associate teaching professor of geospatial intelligence here at Penn State. Thanks for stopping by. Let me tell you a little bit about myself. First of all, I love geography. I always have. I loved it since I was a little boy through grade school. I studied geography at Penn State, and I spent 33 years at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency before retiring and coming to Penn State. Geography and geospatial intelligence is so important to our lives because, as General Jim Clapper, former director of National Intelligence and director of NGA, once said, everything happens somewhere. Certainly, along with geography, I love my family. Here you'll see my wife and I on vacation in Hawaii, and then you see my son and his family. They live down in Northern Virginia, and two of our six grandchildren live there. Molly and I like to travel, and when we do, we like to collect some indigenous art. This is from a Pueblo tribe down in New Mexico-- a wedding vase. And over here we have an Aboriginal wombat from Australia. I'm also a lover of trains-- the real ones and the model ones. Here is a model that runs around our Christmas tree every year. It is of the Lehigh Valley Railroad. And I have that in my blood because my great-grandfather spent a whole career working for Lehigh Valley between New York and Buffalo. Wait. Did I mention that I went to Penn State, and I bleed blue and white? We are!
Dr. Gregory A. Thomas
Greg Thomas was in the law enforcement intelligence analysis field for the 26 years before coming to Penn State. Greg received his Bachelor of Science degree in Criminal Justice with a minor in Sociology from Shippensburg University of Pennsylvania, a Master of Public Administration from the Pennsylvania State University, and a PhD in Administration and Leadership Studies from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. His dissertation work focused on the role of state and local law enforcement in homeland security.
Greg is a lifetime Certified Criminal Analyst through the International Association of Law Enforcement Intelligence Analysts. He has published articles relating to organized crime, criminal intelligence analysis, and terrorism. In addition to teaching at Penn State, Greg has provided instruction for law enforcement intelligence analysts and is an adjunct instructor at Central Pennsylvania College, teaching criminal intelligence analysis courses.
Greg's framework for teaching this course is from an analytical perspective. He intends to show how geospatial intelligence can be used as a technique for analyzing data.
Greg can be reached by phone at: (717) 991-2277. For email, please use the course email system in Canvas or gat5@psu.edu. For additional information about Greg, click here.
Meet Greg Thomas, instructor of GEOG 882 (0:43 seconds).
Hello, my name is Greg Thomas. I'm the Assistant Director for Geospatial Intelligence programs at Penn State, and I teach several fundamental and advanced courses on topic of geospatial intelligence. My background is in intelligence and analysis in the law enforcement field, and I bring that experience to the program and the courses I teach. In my classes I stress the analysis of human activity over place and time, to provide a decision advantage or to solve a problem, and I show how geospatial intelligence as a discipline is used for analyzing data in various fields of study. I look forward to exploring geospatial intelligence analysis further with you, and hope you enjoy the course!
Dr. Michael L. Thomas
(Spring 2)
Mike Thomas has been with the Federal Government in some capacity in technical and intelligence analysis field for over the past 30 years all over the world, primarily in Europe and Africa, but also in Asia and South America. His current duties are instructing full time as a Professor of Cyberwarfare Studies at the USAF Cyber College and USAF Air War College at Maxwell AFB. His previous assignment was as a Systems Engineer, and duties included designing and implementing intelligence based networks for various DoD users on behalf of Naval InfoWarfare Center (NIWC) LANT.
Mike earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of the State of New York, a Master of Arts degree in Mathematics & Statistics from the University of West Florida, a Master of Science in Military Arts and Sciences from the Air Command and Staff College (ACSC), a Master in Strategic Studies from the Air War College, an MSGIS from Penn State and lastly, finished a Doctorate in Information Systems while stationed at Georgia Tech. His military education includes completion of the Army Signal Officers Basic Course at Ft. Gordon, Ga, the Basic Communications Officers Course at Keesler AFB, MS, Air Command and Staff College, and Air War College (AWC) at Maxwell AFB where he won the 2008 8th AF Award in Cyberspace Research. His specialty is how big data analysis can be used as a method for evaluating geospatial intelligence.
Currently the latest strategy for Cyberwarfare names four nation states, China, Russia, Iran and the DPRK as primary threats in the cyber domain. Now, more than ever, cyber has a "geo" component, from the four nations name previously to the whole concept of "Defending Forward." "Forward" is a direction and the nation states certainly correspond to places.
Many data sources not commonly thought of as having a "geo" context actually do have a "geo" reference on closer inspection.
Mike can be reached by phone at: (850) 814-7064. For email, please use the course email system in Canvas, mlt222@psu.edu or mthomas304@yahoo.com.
Meet Mike Thomas, instructor of GEOG 882 (0:46 seconds).
Hi, my name is Dr. Thomas, and I will be your instructor either for Introduction to Geospatial Intelligence or Cyber Geography. I love geography. I love maps. Maps are a form of art. I ended up getting into this field quite by accident about 15 years ago and I've never left it. The interesting thing about it is that I was an information scientist to begin with. Now I've just incorporated geospatial information into another, added another domain, if you will. In my spare time I'm an avid scuba diver I travel all over the world underwater in a different geography altogether.