Daniel Civco, a professor in the Department of Natural Resources and the Environment, has been named as the recipient of the 2010 SAIC/Estes Memorial Teaching Award of the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS).
The SAIC Estes Memorial Teaching Award, with funding provided by Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), was inaugurated in 2003 and is named in honor of Professor John E. (“Jack”) Estes, teacher, mentor, scientist, and friend of the ASPRS.
The award recognizes individual achievement in the promotion of remote sensing and GIS technology, and applications through educational efforts. Award recipients are chosen based on documented excellence in education, teaching, mentoring, and training. The recipient receives a plaque and a cash award.
Civco is director of the Center for Land use Education and Research (CLEAR) and co-founder of the Laboratory for Earth Resources Information Systems (LERIS) at UConn, as well as a co-PI of the NASA-funded Regional Earth Resource Applications Center (RESAC) established in 1999.
He received his BS degree in natural resources conservation in 1974, and MS and Ph.D. degrees in plant science, the former concentrating in landscape planning and the latter in remote sensing.
Civco is passionate about working with students in the classroom, and spends countless hours preparing content for his students. He advises undergraduate students within the geomatics and other natural resource concentrations. He has served as major advisor to more than 30 MS and Ph.D. degree graduate students, as well as serving as associate advisor to nearly 70 others.
His manuscript “Perspectives on Earth Resources Mapping Education in the United States” provided the impetus for the creation of the ASPRS Remote Sensing Core Curriculum, and it served also as the blueprint for the IAEGS curriculum.
He is a well-published scholar, and received the ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute Inc.) Award for Best Scientific Paper in GIS in 1997 and in 2001, and second place for the 1999 ERDAS Award for the Best Scientific Paper in Remote Sensing.
In 2007 he received the National Award from the Program for Excellence in College and University Teaching in the Food and Agricultural Sciences, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the highest honor an educator in the field of agriculture and natural resources can receive.
“Although I got to know him only in the latter years of his life, I admired and respected Jack throughout my entire professional career,” Civco said. “I am no Jack Estes, but I have tried to aspire to the principles and ideals that defined him. Jack was an exceptional scholar, mentor, leader, and gentleman.”
Civco has been very active in ASPRS. In his first term as chair of the ASPRS Education and Professional Development Committee, he was instrumental in assisting then-President Roger Hoffer in establishing the ASPRS International Educational Literature Award. He was a director for the New England Region, served on the National Board of Directors from 2002 through 2004, was elected director of the Remote Sensing Applications Division in 2000, and served as chairman of the ASPRS Education and Professional Development Committee, of which he will again be chair in April 2010. He received an ASPRS Fellow award in 2003.
The SAIC/Estes Memorial Teaching Award will be presented in April at the ASPRS 2010 Annual Conference in San Diego, Calif.