UB Adds Statistics and GIS to Growing Course Offerings

The University of Belize continues to broaden its course offerings, expanding its curricula to include areas of study that translate well in the ever-demanding job market.  The most recent offerings include statistics and Geographic Information Systems.  The GIS programme is intended to be the first of its kind, exposing students to the major concepts and rationale of spatial data and its role in addressing environmental, land and natural resource issues.  Through the Inter-American Development Bank, the national tertiary institution has launched bachelor’s programmes in both fields.  Julianne Pasos is the Dean of Faculty of Science and Technology.

Julianne Pasos

Julianne Pasos, Dean of Faculty, Science and Technology

“We are launching two programs today.  We are launching the Bachelors in Statistics program and we are launching the Professional Certificate in GIS program.  These two programs are some of the recent additions that we are doing today for the university and we are hoping to start them in January.  The Bachelor of Statistics program was developed in partnership with SIB and it came about because we found the need.  There is need within the country of Belize for statisticians.  SIB is looking to launch the National Statistics System and for that the proposal is to have that all organizations will have a statistics unit.  Our Professional Certificate in GIS now, is one of those where we looked at, GIS is one of those words that is buzzing everywhere.  It is a new technology where, well not new, but it’s one of those that is picking up and so it has applications in all different fields.  So we saw that there is need to train people out there.  We kept having people coming to ask, can I take a course in GIS?  Do you all have a program in this and so we said we can develop one, and so in developing it though we said, people don’t want to come in and sit in a four-year or two-year program.  So a professional certificate would be the way to go.  The professional certificate is a one-year program that gives the person or the student the applications of GIS in different fields.”