The Vassar Innovation Lab (VIL), Vassar’s makerspace located in the basement of College Center, has recently expanded its UAV (“drone”) capabilities to include three quadcopters capable of aerial photography, videography, and capturing images for photogrammetric processing (maps and 3D renderings).  In Fall 2024, the VIL partnered with the Film department to host a drone photography and videography workshop at Sunset Lake. Students who attended that workshop later captured aerial photographs for a fine arts class project and recorded oblique aerial video of the athletic fields, which were edited into post-game highlight reels and posted on Instagram.  In Fall 2024 and Spring 2025, drone mapping workshops were held at Vassar Barns…

On November 17, 2021, Vassar College Earth Science and Geography Department and Hudson Valley Mappers (the Vassar College-based chapter of Youth Mappers) hosted an online GIS Day event featuring student, faculty, and staff speakers from various departments across campus including Environmental Studies, the Environmental Cooperative at Vassar Barns, Hudson Valley Mappers, Library Digital Scholarship & Technology Services, and Academic Computing Services. Presentations spanned a wide variety of topics, including: Spatial analysis of data from wildlife camera traps at Hubbard Brook experimental forest Local pollinator pathways and heat Island mapping projects Local tree canopy analysis and environmental justice mapping and other Hudson Valley Mappers projects Mapping tools for websites you can…