Hello! My name is Michelle Brake, I am a ECCE Student Associate for the Centre of Geographic Sciences (COGS) in Lawrencetown, Nova Scotia. I am enrolled in the post-graduate Advanced Geographic Sciences program.

I graduated from Mount Allison University in 2016 with a major in Geography and a minor in Drama. My major allowed me to experience both the arts and sciences side of Geography with community planning, climate change, and GIS. My passion is community planning with a focus on climate change adaptation and mitigation. I believe that with GIS we can better understand how climate change will impact our cities and how we can plan for the impact.

At COGS we have the opportunity to learn from a wide variety of concentrations including GIS, GIS for Business and Remote Sensing. The first term we take eight courses that allow us to build skills in GIS, remote sensing, geostatistical analysis, programming, geodesy, and more. The program allows you to round out your skills set and expose you to all concentrations before choosing where to focus second term. In addition to all this the program emphasizes the need to develop your public presence and personal portfolio. This allows you to start getting the tools together to better plan job searching and life after COGS.

I look forward to keeping you updated on life at COGS and the Advanced Geographic Sciences program over the next eight months. Look out for an update about the Esri User Conference in Halifax next month!