Ⅰ.Introduction
In 2002, the Ministry of Education approved the Southwest Jiaotong University to set up undergraduate majors in geographic information systems based on surveying and mapping disciplines. In the same year, the first GIS undergraduate students were recruited. In 2012, the Ministry of Education changed the major's name to geographic information science. The geographic information science major of Southwest Jiaotong University aims to cultivate excellent geographical information talents with rail transit background, domestic first-class and international influence. In the first two years, undergraduate program for the major contains general education courses and basic courses of the discipline of surveying and mapping, and in the next two years, students can select different specialties in which there are elective courses. The geographic information science major of Southwest Jiaotong University is a national key professional (nurturing) major, with some "production-study-research" talent training platforms, e.g. the national joint engineering laboratory, the national-level simulation experiment teaching center, the national engineering practice education center, the Ministry of Education innovation team, and so on.
Program Code: 070703
Program Name: Geographic Information Science
Ⅱ. Objectives
For the needs of major national strategies and ecological civilization construction such as “railway transportation”, “western development”, “One Belt and One Road” and “beautiful China”, and the developments of geographic information science and technology and industry, the geographic information science major of Southwest Jiaotong University aims to cultivate excellent students with the basic knowledge, basic theories and basic skills in the specialties of surveying, photogrammetry and remote sensing, who can conduct application, teaching and scientific research work in research institutions, universities and national economic industries. Students should become outstanding geoscience talents in GIS application technology development, production management and administrative management in the branches of surveying, transportation, land management, resources management, environment, population, tourism, national defense, infrastructure and planning management.
III.Graduation Requirements
(1) Political requirements: to have a firm and correct political direction; to love the motherland; to love the people; to support the leadership of the Communist Party of China; to consciously practice the core values of socialism; to obey the law; to unit and cooperate with other people; to have a good ideological, moral cultivation and professional ethics.
(2) Humanities requirements: to master the knowledge of humanities and social sciences; to establish a scientific world outlook, outlook on life and values; to have a good humanities and social science quality, high social responsibility, sound personality, physical and mental health, respect for life; to correctly handle the relationship among people, society and nature.
(3) Scientific requirements: to have solid basic knowledge and basic experimental skills in the fields of mathematics, physics, chemistry, computer science, etc.; to form a scientific and standardized natural world view and methodology; to master the learning methods; to establish the concept of lifelong learning.
(4) Professional requirements: to have a broad professional basic knowledge; to master the basic principles and methods of geographic information acquisition, processing, analysis, representation, application and service; to have good professional basic skills; to understand the status and development trends of the discipline and the branch; to apply the professional theory, experimental skills and information technology to systematically analyze and study the complex human-land system problems such as urbanization, globalization, environmental change, ecological security, disaster prevention and mitigation and sustainable development, and to propose corresponding suggestions or solutions.
(5) Thinking requirements: to have the ability of discerning thinking; to apply the professional knowledge and skills in practice; to discover, discriminate, question and evaluate the phenomena and problems from multiple perspectives in the related fields, and to propose independent opinions or responses.
(6) Innovation and entrepreneurship requirements: to have innovative and entrepreneurial awareness; to put innovative thinking, innovation ability and entrepreneurial spirit into practice in innovative experiments and innovative technology development and research.
(7) Communication and cooperation requirements: to have good communication and expression skills; to have the ability to carry out academic discussion and social communication; to effectively communicate with peers, enterprises, the public and management departments on the phenomena and problems in this field through written or oral presentation; to have a strong sense of teamwork and cooperation, and to actively participate the team activities as a member or leader.
(8) Global vision requirements: to master a foreign language; to understand major issues of globalization, urbanization, ecological environment security, and so on; to understand and respect the diversity of different cultures in the world; to have the ability to participate in the cross-culture exchange and cooperation of geographical sciences.
(9) Ability improvement requirements: to have self-management and self-learning ability; to achieve ability improvement through continuous learning; to adapt to social needs.
IV. Duration and Degree
Duration: Four years
Degree: Bachelor of Science
V. Main Subject and Main Course
Main Subject：Surveying and Mapping
Main Course：Cartography，Error theory and surveying adjustment foundation，Principles of Geographic Information Systems，Photogrammetry，Remote sensing principle and application，Principles of Geographic Information Systems，GIS Application Development，Human Geography，Thematic Cartography and Spatial Information Visualization，3D GIS Technology Foundation，WebGIS Technology and Development
