California State University, Northridge is the educational, cultural and economic heart of the San Fernando Valley. The Valley, as it is known locally, is home to nearly 1.8 million people, making it America's fifth largest city. Like all large metropolitan areas, The Valley has its share of challenges and CSUN has been central to finding solutions.
The maps below allows visitors to quickly assess the level of CSUN's committment to the region's educational, economic, health and general well-being.
Links in the navigation bar include instructions on using the map; customizing it and sharing it with stakeholders. Links to critical data about conditions in the Valley, including demographics, health, crime, education and more are also available from the left navigation bar.
1) The point markers demonstrate some of the service activities conducted by the College of Education in recent years. Each marker indicates a location where CSUN has a service activity. Clicking on one of these markers activates a pop-up window containing an informational blurb and a link to a web site containing more detailed accounting of the project/activity. The pop-up windows provide some "branding" for each college and CSUN itself.
2) The polygon map (thematic background map) shows the rate of diabetes in Los Angeles County and represents the value a map as we at CSUN seek to identify areas of need in the community. A "needs assessment" map such as this may also prove useful as we seek to justify requests for grants from funding sources.
We propose to add 10-15 base layer maps that can be switched on/off. We can map local patterns in ethnicity, income, health, crime and educational variables.
Because of the limitations of this software (Google Maps), only two such layers are displayed simultaneously. We have additional software and server capabilities that allow the Geography Department to display many layers of data simultaneously.
This map can be populated by service providers from all colleges on campus, perhaps even dynamically, by having faculty/staff/student groups submit short surveys detailing their service activity in the community and beyond.
This survey could replace other less convenient means of reporting service activity, and regularize the collection of service actity data across campus....and you can print it and save it for RTP, assessment, and other purposes.
Sample survey (.pdf new window)
Below is the link to see the map in Google Maps
Here is the map inside an existing web page, as it might appear on a campus web site.