Since the beginning, Juniper Systems has put an importance on education, conserving natural resources, and serving the community. By donating 25 Mesa 2 Rugged Tablets, 6 Geode Sub-meter GPS Receivers, and all the appropriate accessories to Utah State University’s Quinney College of Natural Resources, we strive to continue this focus. These data collection tools will be used to educate undergraduate students on the basics of modern GIS and field data collection and to support graduate student and professor field research projects around the world.
In addition to the $88,000 product donation, Juniper Systems and Campbell Scientific have provided funding for the GIS lab in the new USU Natural Resources Building currently under construction. The lab will be named after Juniper Systems co-founder and friend, Jan Saalfeld. As a trained forester, Jan was an advocate for our natural resource customers and played an instrumental role in the development of our rugged handheld data collectors for the forestry and environmental science industries. Providing students with the tools needed to collect field data is just one way we’re working to preserve Jan’s legacy.
“We didn’t want to put a plaque on the building and call it good,” said Geospatial Manager John Florio. “After discussions with the dean, it was decided that the best way to provide continued support for the program would be to provide their students with real-world tools they can use in the field. What’s better than having students learn on the newest, latest, and best products for field data collection?”
As part of this donation, Juniper Systems will provide ongoing support and conduct introductory training at the beginning of each semester. The goal of these trainings will be to assist instructors and professors on product usage and function, discuss best practices for GIS data collection, and to answer questions about current GIS data collection technologies.
USU College of Natural Resources Dean Chris Luecke said, “The Mesa 2’s will be tremendously valuable in a couple of different ways. The first way is on individual research projects. We have large groups of students out in the field working on projects. Having those in the field will make our data collection tremendously efficient. The second way is when we’re doing our training and education program in the Fall. We run labs and we’ve been importing data and letting them work on those data files and make maps and that sort of thing. But now we’ll actually have them go out and collect the data and then bring it in. It will be a more integrated experience for the students.”
One of the values on our list of company maxims reads, “We provide products and use manufacturing practices that help conserve natural resources and preserve the environment.” By providing students and professors at Utah State University with the devices needed to efficiently collect data and conduct environmental research projects, we’re proud to be acting on the values our company holds dear.
For more information about our Company Maxims, click here.