“The seed was planted but it didn’t bloom until I was at UNT,” he says. When he took his first geography course from associate professor Alexandra Ponette-González, he was fascinated by the way she communicated “the intricacies of how the world works on a simple, yet refined, level.” “Only a few weeks into the semester I knew my calling was in the world of geography,” Bova says. He participated in internships with the city of Denton’s solid waste and sustainability divisions. For his master’s thesis, he used GIS to analyze how retail chains affected local retailers within certain districts in Denton. At his current company, Bova identifies the best real estate assets in the best locations by using geographic techniques and spatial data. One sector he focuses on is retail. For example, he looks at factors such as demographics and if signage can be viewed from the freeway. A chain store wouldn’t want its locations too close to each other. A hail damage repair shop wouldn’t be located where it doesn’t hail. He focuses on a geographically defined area to see how many people live there and to gather other information, such as their drive time to and from work. His team develops a grid system that takes all those disparate data sources and combs them for specific locations so they can create more detailed trade areas. “Everything is located somewhere and the ‘why’ is what we’re interested in,” Bova says.
Making visual connections Faustina Ankomah (’01 M.S.) was used to creating maps with pencils and stencils. But that changed when she was introduced to GIS as a geography and sociology undergraduate student at the University of Ghana. “The maps were alive,” she says. “You could tweak the data. You could change the data. And you could change the map because they had different color palettes.” Now working as a senior information systems analyst for XTO Energy,
Jennifer Holland (’08, ’11 M.S.)
Faustina Ankomah (’01 M.S.)
Zongpei Tang (’06 M.S.)