Vincent Bergamo August Undergraduate of the Month

1) What major(s), minors, and/or certificates you are working on at UMD?

2) What are your interests within your program(s)?

3) What previous jobs, internships, and volunteer experience have you had?

4) Where you are from (optional)?

I am majoring in GIS and going in to my senior year at UMD. My primary interests are in GIS data collection, map making and remote sensing. My current internship dealt with data collection and map making, and I am still interested in seeing what I could do with remote sensing in a professional setting. I’ve always enjoyed working with geography and started getting involved with some volunteer groups this past year. I volunteered at a local Anacostia Watershed cleanup at Cool Springs Elementary. It was an awesome experience and really opened my eyes to how poorly we treat our natural surroundings. I previously worked for a web site development company and also worked 2 summers as a lifeguard in New Jersey. I am originally from the New Jersey coast, right near Sandy Hook (the tip of northeast NJ on a map).

1) Where you are interning?

2) What are your internship responsibilities?

3) What project(s) are you working on or contributing to?

4) How is the internship experience relevant to your studies in Geographical Sciences?

5) What are your career goals after your graduate?

I am interning in Baltimore City under the Recreation and Parks Department. I am in the Forestry Division and work with the TreeBaltimore team. My mentor, Victor Miranda, and I were the only GIS employees in Forestry. We were tasked with creating a map that showed locations of newly planted trees in Baltimore City. In order to do this we would go out in the field and collect the GPS locations on iPads and add the locations to our map. My internship goes hand-in-hand with my GIS major since I am using ArcGIS every day at work to process the data that victor and I are collecting. It has shown me what I can do with my major and what I want to do next year when I graduate. My ideal career would be working in a park system in New York City, especially Central Park. Being from northeast New Jersey, I grew up an hour from the city and I love the environment that it offers.