Meet Our Faculty

Patrick Kennelly
Associate Professor
GIS Program Director
Email: pkennelly@cocc.edu

For more than three decades, Pat has worked with geographic information systems (GIS) to make maps for the natural resource industry, state government, environmental consulting, and higher education. Specializing in cartography, his maps, apps, and data visualizations have been featured on the BBC and at three exhibition venues: the Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Los Angeles Center for Land Use Interpretation, and the Academy of Architecture of Mendrisio, Switzerland. His maps are also featured in nine books on topics that include landscape ecology, geology, cartography, and GIS, and have also graced the covers of seven international scientific journals and two books on cartography.

Pat has discussed his map-making techniques with audiences in Italy, France, Germany, Portugal, Croatia, Romania, Australia, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Brazil, Chile, Canada, and across the United States. Pat loves working with COCC students in his courses to introduce them to the wonders of mapping with GIS.

Jack Colpitt 
GIS Part-time Instructor
Email: jcolpitt@cocc.edu 

Jack joined COCC in 2024 and teaches GEOG 285: Data Conversion and Documentation.  This course covers techniques to collect and to convert data between formats, projections, and coordinate systems. It cultivates research and experimentation with data and enhances problem-solving skills. GEOG 285 emphasizes metadata use, which allows the data user to determine whether a particular data set is suitable for its proposed use.

Blair Deaver
GIS Part-time Instructor 
Email: bdeaver@cocc.edu

Blair has been an instructor with COCC since 2018 and teaches GEOG 287: Spatial Analysis.  Spatial Analysis explores analytical capabilities of geographic information systems. The course covers techniques to locate and to describe features and moves to advanced techniques based on higher-level spatial objects. Students enrolled in GEOG 287 use the ArcGIS Spatial Analyst extension to analyze raster datasets in the lab.

Bob Earle
GIS Part-time Instructor 
Email: bearle@cocc.edu

Bob joined our faculty in 2022 and teaches both GIS and Geography courses.  For the GIS program, Bob periodically offers GEOG 101: Intro to Geospatial Science & GIS and GEOG 267: Geodatabase design.  GEOG 267 covers the fundamentals of creating, using, editing, and managing spatial and attribute data in ArcGIS. The course explores data migration; data loading; topology rules; use of subtypes, attribute domains, and relationship classes.  Students learn how to create, edit, and analyze geometric networks. 

Gabe Rousseau 
GIS Part-time Instructor 
Email: grousseau2@cocc.edu

Gabe began teaching for COCC in 2022 and introduces students to the world of Geospatial Science and GIS through GEOG 101.  This course introduces science underlying geospatial technologies including geographic information systems, global positioning systems, satellite and unmanned aerial systems imagery, and cartography. GEOG 101 also introduces how geospatial technology can be used with the scientific method to investigate questions in a broad range of fields including the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.

Heather Sauerland
GIS Part-time Instructor
Email: hsauerland@cocc.edu

Heather joined the COCC faculty in 2023 and teaches GEOG 101 at our Redmond campus. This course introduces science underlying geospatial technologies including geographic information systems, global positioning systems, satellite and unmanned aerial systems imagery, and cartography. GEOG 101 also introduces how geospatial technology can be used with the scientific method to investigate questions in a broad range of fields including the sciences, social sciences, and humanities.