• Graduate is the first in his family to complete a postgraduate degree and sees his work provide practical information to his community every day

From magpie attack locations to regional emergency maps, a Charles Sturt University graduate and University Medal winner sees his job as having a local impact every day.

Mr Jordan Smith (pictured) graduated with a Master of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) and Remote Sensing in the Charles Sturt School of Agricultural, Environmental and Veterinary Sciences and was awarded a University Medal at the 3.30pm graduation ceremony in Bathurst on Wednesday 7 December.

The University Medal is the highest honour that a student can receive. To be awarded a University Medal, a student has to achieve High Distinctions (HDs) in nearly all their subjects and if a student receives all HDs, they will receive a possible Grade Point Average (GPA) of seven.

Mr Smith lives in Millthorpe with his wife and a five-year-old daughter. His mother was the first in his family to graduate from university (at Charles Sturt in Bathurst in 1998) and he is the first to complete a postgraduate degree.

He said he realised he wanted to pursue this discipline one week into helping the mapping team in his first job as an undergraduate.

“I immediately knew it suited me and that I could do well,” Mr Smith said.

“I now work for NSW Local Land Services as a GIS Analyst, and I have a lot of people in that organisation to thank for convincing me to have a crack at the Masters.

“Having worked with GIS as part of my job for a few years and hoping to make it my full-time profession, I wanted to learn the theoretical basis for things I did in my job but also become proficient to seek more job opportunities.”

Mr Smith withdrew from an undergraduate degree at Charles Sturt when he was younger, and it’s been extremely rewarding for him to re-engage with the University and its community.

“I have learnt that the setbacks in life are the moments where we learn the most and make us into the people we become,” he said.

“What kept me motivated during my studies when things became challenging was being able to remain critical of my work, so I still wanted to improve, plus the unrelenting support of my wife.”

Mr Smith sees his work as vitally important and having an impact at the local level every day.

“Being able to bring ‘location’ to the centre of everything people and communities do is a fantastic tool,” he said.

“This includes, for example, from crowdsourcing magpie attack locations to get the word out where your friends and neighbours are safe to walk, to helping farmers understand soils on their farms at a paddock scale, to mapping weather events and impacts via data from satellites so people and communities can respond better to emergencies.”