Rate My Professor Mark Kumler

Mark Kumler, Professor and Chair of the Department of Geographic Information Science at the University of Redlands since 2004, brings extensive expertise in geographic information systems to his teaching and research roles. He earned a Ph.D. in Geography from the University of California, Santa Barbara, an M.A. in Geography from Michigan State University, and a B.A. in Computer Science from Dartmouth College. His career history includes serving as a visiting instructor at Dartmouth College, assistant professor at the University of Colorado Boulder, associate professor at California State University, San Bernardino, and research scientist at the Geospatial Research Centre New Zealand. Kumler has also held sabbatical appointments at the University of Auckland and the University of Canterbury in New Zealand.

At the University of Redlands, Kumler teaches undergraduate courses such as Foundations of Spatial Thinking, Fundamentals of GIS, and a first-year seminar titled Mapping World Soccer, along with graduate courses including Communicating Geographic Information, GIS Project Management, and Map Projections and Coordinate Systems. He has designed and directed the development of three GIS laboratories and supervised more than 150 students in the Master of GIS and Master of Science in GIS degree programs. His research specializations include map projections, spatial coordinate systems, digital terrain representations, and GIS applications. Kumler has received more than $8 million in external grants and contracts, including two from the National Science Foundation. His publications have appeared in Cartography and Geographic Information Systems, Cartographica, Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment, Journal of Archaeological Science, and The California Geographer. Key publications include “Eyes from the Sky: Application of Satellite-Based Indices to Assess Vegetation Casualty on Grand Bahama Island One Year Post–Hurricane Dorian” (2023, with Z. McKenzie, R. Ma, K. Williams, and W. Hayes), “Quantifying Visual Prominence in Social Landscapes” (2013, with W. Bernardini, A. Barnash, and M. Wong), “An Intensive Comparison of Triangulated Irregular Networks (TINs) and Digital Elevation Models (DEMs)” (1994), and “Three World Maps on a Möbius Strip” (1991, with W.R. Tobler).