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angledgeIn Word, there are a handful of footnotes. Not important. PLEASE provide comments on improving this; it's the centerpiece of my application for a $12,000 scholarship.
Imagine that the year is 1747. We are in the frontier settlement of Philadelphia, the growing capital city of the Colony of Pennsylvania. While there were Swedish settlers in the area approximately 75 years earlier, the city was only officially chartered by William Penn in 1682. Since then, the city has grown to a population of nearly 10,000 – the largest town in North America. And it’s growing larger all the time, with ships full of new settlers arriving from England, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Scotland. Many of these settlers were arriving after receiving favorable reports about life in the colonies from friends or relatives who had preceded them to the New World: news of the colony’s ample farmland and religious tolerance was especially enticing.
One such early pioneer who may have written encouraging letters to relatives living in the Old World was Donnaidh McPherson, who by 1747 had been living in the Philadelphia area for over a half-century. The circumstances under which Donnaidh migrated here were not auspicious: he was kidnapped from the docks in Inverness, Scotland, transported to the colonies against his will, and sold into indentured servitude. When he was released from his indenture at the age of 21, “William Penn gave him a hundred acres of land in Chester County, Pennsylvania.” He married Ruth Shiers in 1712 and they raised their daughters and sons. He died in 1755 at the age of 63.
Eleven generations and 218 years later, a descendant of Donnaidh was born in Philadelphia. That was me: Angela Ledgerwood, first child of Ludell McPherson and Scott Ledgerwood. While my family moved around quite a bit as I was growing up, I have lived most of my life in the Philadelphia area, dwelling at different times in Cherry Hill and Medford, New Jersey, and Conshohocken and Wayne, Pennsylvania. I presently live just north of Philadelphia in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, perhaps 50 miles from Donnaidh’s Kennett Square farm.
Despite our slender genetic connection, I find it difficult to envision what life was like for Donnaidh. The Philadelphia he knew is almost unimaginably remote from mine. His Philadelphia was on the edge of a wilderness of unknown proportions, separated from the civilization of Europe by a six to eight week ocean voyage. The population was a hodgepodge mixture of colonists from many different Old World cultures. For a young man from the Scottish Highlands, it must have been a shock indeed to walk down the streets of the city and see Quaker meeting houses, hear German conversations, smell French cooking, and touch Dutch linens. Information moved slowly, and many people came to know the land they lived on, their neighbors in their religious congregation, and very little of the world outside those set boundaries. It was a harsh life by our standards, although many colonists considered it a vast improvement over the circumstances they had left in the Old World.
Compare this to my world. The wilderness nearest to my house is probably somewhere in Canada. I regularly email and telephone my cousins in England, and can receive instantaneous news updates from events around the world. My Philadelphia has 1.5 million residents. Consider also the details of my daily life. I do not share my dwelling with my family. I neither grow my own food nor hand-manufacture my own possessions. My level of education would have been unthinkable for a woman, especially since my field of study is a traditionally male-dominated field (my undergraduate degree is from Cornell University, Bachelor of Science, 1997 ). My profession – environmental science, specializing in pollution remediation – would be incomprehensible to someone who lived before the Industrial Revolution. I think the culture I live in would be more completely alien to my ancestor, a Scottish Highlander and Pennsylvanian colonist from the first half of the 18th century, than the one he encountered by emigrating.
However, there are some threads of continuity between my life and those of my Scottish forebears. I am a member of Grace Presbyterian Church in Jenkintown, a faith tradition in direct descent from the reformed Protestant church of Scotland. I participate in the life of my community through volunteer work with the Metropolitan AIDS Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance (MANNA) – and participation in community life was a virtue prized by both Scots and settlers alike. My competitive spirit is whetted through participation in a local Masters’ swim team, the Fins Aquatics Club. The basic motivation I have for my career in environmental science – an abiding love of the land and a desire to see it used productively – would be easily shared with a farmer. These portions of my life story would probably resonate with Great-Grandpa Donnaidh.
But I’m fairly certain that my graduate course of study would be unfathomable to my distant ancestor. Starting in October 2003, I will undertake a master’s degree in geographical information science, or GIS, at the University of Edinburgh. Simply put, GIS combines many different layers of information about a place to provide a better understanding of that place. What layers of information are used depends on the purpose – finding the best location for a new store, analyzing environmental damage, viewing similar crimes in a city to detect a pattern, and so on. I intend to use GIS for environmental science: creating maps, visualizing multifaceted environmental problems, and modeling possible cleanup solutions. Environmental remediation data is extremely complex and is inherently related to location. GIS is an ideal tool to make visualization easier. Environmental regulatory agencies are increasingly aware of the advantages of GIS, and are beginning to make data submittals in GIS-compatible formats mandatory. Because of this push from the regulators, use of GIS as an analysis tool is becoming the norm in the environmental consulting industry as well. Another effect of the spreading availability of GIS is that environmental data is more accessible to the public through the internet.
It has been my observation that there are very few people who have knowledge in both the environmental science/geology fields and the field of data management. People who have such hybrid skill sets are greatly in demand, because managing data for projects is much easier when the data manager has some underlying knowledge of what’s going on with the project. Following completion of the GIS degree at the University of Edinburgh, I envision returning to the consulting field and becoming a full-time data manager for a remediation firm working on large-scale projects. I believe that such work will be extremely valuable. Currently, environmental firms spend a great deal of time and resources collecting data that is then used in only a limited manner, because proper data management systems generally are not in place. I believe that GIS can help turn unmanaged data into valuable knowledge. I want to use GIS to help other environmental consultants to be better scientists and engineers, by putting their data at their fingertips, readily available for analysis and review. Based upon the frustration I personally have experienced when trying to work on a project that has poor data management, I believe that my skills will be in high demand, and will result in better decision making, and hopefully, more cost-effective remediations.
When considering different graduate programs, several unique factors of the GIS program at the University of Edinburgh appealed to me. First of all, I wanted a one-year program, so that I can minimize the interruption to my career. Also, a one-year program offers a significant cost savings over a two-year program. Second, the instruction setup at the University of Edinburgh divides the twelve-month master’s program into two parts: the first half of the year is spent in class-based instruction, and the second half of the year is devoted to a single project. I am enthusiastic about spending six months planning, designing, and creating a single, advanced-level project. Furthermore, Edinburgh’s program is highly rated, receiving a five-star research rating from the most recent UK research assessment exercise. Edinburgh’s Geography Department owns “the most significant dedicated GIS computing facility of any University in Europe.”
There is an additional reason I decided to go overseas for my graduate studies. The disciplines of environmental science and land-use planning are understood and undertaken in radically different ways on the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean. I first became aware of this in 1992, when I took a summer internship with the Kent County Council Department of Economic Development in Maidstone, England. In the United Kingdom, the government has significantly more control over privately-owned land than does the gove rnment in the United States. This level of control has permitted British regulators to experiment with approaching certain problems on a regional basis, instead of cleaning up or planning for individual parcels of land. I believe that American policymakers could adopt some of the British innovations to suit our political scenario, with significant possibilities for increased cleanup efficiencies and streamlined land-use planning. GIS, which at its core is a tool for visualizing places and spaces, can play a crucial role in changing the scope of vision for regulators, landowners, and other concerned parties.
And there is a final reason I chose the University of Edinburgh program. I want to live in Scotland so I can get to know the nation and its people in a way that two weeks of tourism do not allow. I am certain that Donnaidh would sympathize with my desire to travel to Scotland, for his great-grandson, John C. McPherson, reported that Donnaidh “… often dreamed of seeing his home; and once, so great was his feeling of homesickness, he started to run in the direction of that spot.” I understand my ancestor’s longing for his native land. I traveled to Scotland for two weeks last April, visiting Inverness, the Isle of Skye, and Edinburgh, and I immediately fell in love with the countryside, the people, and the culture I encountered. While Inverness and the Isle of Skye were undeniably beautiful, it was Edinburgh that completely won my heart. The city is a marvelous metropolis of approximately 600,000 people and hundreds of years of history. I am delighted that I have the opportunity to spend an entire year, living within one-half mile of Edinburgh Castle, St. Giles Cathedral, Holyrood Palace, and the new Scottish Parliament.
I also welcome the chance to be an informal American ambassador, mingling with students from all over the world and creating bonds of friendship that cross national borders. I believe that, upon returning to Philadelphia after the completion of my degree, I will be a continuation of the tradition of Scots-Americans making valuable contributions to our area. It is my intention to locate in Philadelphia and continue to work in the environmental remediation consulting field.
Imagine that the year is 1747. We are in the frontier settlement of Philadelphia, the growing capital city of the Colony of Pennsylvania. While there were Swedish settlers in the area approximately 75 years earlier, the city was only officially chartered by William Penn in 1682. Since then, the city has grown to a population of nearly 10,000 – the largest town in North America. And it’s growing larger all the time, with ships full of new settlers arriving from England, Germany, the Netherlands, Ireland, and Scotland. Many of these settlers were arriving after receiving favorable reports about life in the colonies from friends or relatives who had preceded them to the New World: news of the colony’s ample farmland and religious tolerance was especially enticing.
One such early pioneer who may have written encouraging letters to relatives living in the Old World was Donnaidh McPherson, who by 1747 had been living in the Philadelphia area for over a half-century. The circumstances under which Donnaidh migrated here were not auspicious: he was kidnapped from the docks in Inverness, Scotland, transported to the colonies against his will, and sold into indentured servitude. When he was released from his indenture at the age of 21, “William Penn gave him a hundred acres of land in Chester County, Pennsylvania.” He married Ruth Shiers in 1712 and they raised their daughters and sons. He died in 1755 at the age of 63.
Eleven generations and 218 years later, a descendant of Donnaidh was born in Philadelphia. That was me: Angela Ledgerwood, first child of Ludell McPherson and Scott Ledgerwood. While my family moved around quite a bit as I was growing up, I have lived most of my life in the Philadelphia area, dwelling at different times in Cherry Hill and Medford, New Jersey, and Conshohocken and Wayne, Pennsylvania. I presently live just north of Philadelphia in Jenkintown, Pennsylvania, perhaps 50 miles from Donnaidh’s Kennett Square farm.
Despite our slender genetic connection, I find it difficult to envision what life was like for Donnaidh. The Philadelphia he knew is almost unimaginably remote from mine. His Philadelphia was on the edge of a wilderness of unknown proportions, separated from the civilization of Europe by a six to eight week ocean voyage. The population was a hodgepodge mixture of colonists from many different Old World cultures. For a young man from the Scottish Highlands, it must have been a shock indeed to walk down the streets of the city and see Quaker meeting houses, hear German conversations, smell French cooking, and touch Dutch linens. Information moved slowly, and many people came to know the land they lived on, their neighbors in their religious congregation, and very little of the world outside those set boundaries. It was a harsh life by our standards, although many colonists considered it a vast improvement over the circumstances they had left in the Old World.
Compare this to my world. The wilderness nearest to my house is probably somewhere in Canada. I regularly email and telephone my cousins in England, and can receive instantaneous news updates from events around the world. My Philadelphia has 1.5 million residents. Consider also the details of my daily life. I do not share my dwelling with my family. I neither grow my own food nor hand-manufacture my own possessions. My level of education would have been unthinkable for a woman, especially since my field of study is a traditionally male-dominated field (my undergraduate degree is from Cornell University, Bachelor of Science, 1997 ). My profession – environmental science, specializing in pollution remediation – would be incomprehensible to someone who lived before the Industrial Revolution. I think the culture I live in would be more completely alien to my ancestor, a Scottish Highlander and Pennsylvanian colonist from the first half of the 18th century, than the one he encountered by emigrating.
However, there are some threads of continuity between my life and those of my Scottish forebears. I am a member of Grace Presbyterian Church in Jenkintown, a faith tradition in direct descent from the reformed Protestant church of Scotland. I participate in the life of my community through volunteer work with the Metropolitan AIDS Neighborhood Nutrition Alliance (MANNA) – and participation in community life was a virtue prized by both Scots and settlers alike. My competitive spirit is whetted through participation in a local Masters’ swim team, the Fins Aquatics Club. The basic motivation I have for my career in environmental science – an abiding love of the land and a desire to see it used productively – would be easily shared with a farmer. These portions of my life story would probably resonate with Great-Grandpa Donnaidh.
But I’m fairly certain that my graduate course of study would be unfathomable to my distant ancestor. Starting in October 2003, I will undertake a master’s degree in geographical information science, or GIS, at the University of Edinburgh. Simply put, GIS combines many different layers of information about a place to provide a better understanding of that place. What layers of information are used depends on the purpose – finding the best location for a new store, analyzing environmental damage, viewing similar crimes in a city to detect a pattern, and so on. I intend to use GIS for environmental science: creating maps, visualizing multifaceted environmental problems, and modeling possible cleanup solutions. Environmental remediation data is extremely complex and is inherently related to location. GIS is an ideal tool to make visualization easier. Environmental regulatory agencies are increasingly aware of the advantages of GIS, and are beginning to make data submittals in GIS-compatible formats mandatory. Because of this push from the regulators, use of GIS as an analysis tool is becoming the norm in the environmental consulting industry as well. Another effect of the spreading availability of GIS is that environmental data is more accessible to the public through the internet.
It has been my observation that there are very few people who have knowledge in both the environmental science/geology fields and the field of data management. People who have such hybrid skill sets are greatly in demand, because managing data for projects is much easier when the data manager has some underlying knowledge of what’s going on with the project. Following completion of the GIS degree at the University of Edinburgh, I envision returning to the consulting field and becoming a full-time data manager for a remediation firm working on large-scale projects. I believe that such work will be extremely valuable. Currently, environmental firms spend a great deal of time and resources collecting data that is then used in only a limited manner, because proper data management systems generally are not in place. I believe that GIS can help turn unmanaged data into valuable knowledge. I want to use GIS to help other environmental consultants to be better scientists and engineers, by putting their data at their fingertips, readily available for analysis and review. Based upon the frustration I personally have experienced when trying to work on a project that has poor data management, I believe that my skills will be in high demand, and will result in better decision making, and hopefully, more cost-effective remediations.
When considering different graduate programs, several unique factors of the GIS program at the University of Edinburgh appealed to me. First of all, I wanted a one-year program, so that I can minimize the interruption to my career. Also, a one-year program offers a significant cost savings over a two-year program. Second, the instruction setup at the University of Edinburgh divides the twelve-month master’s program into two parts: the first half of the year is spent in class-based instruction, and the second half of the year is devoted to a single project. I am enthusiastic about spending six months planning, designing, and creating a single, advanced-level project. Furthermore, Edinburgh’s program is highly rated, receiving a five-star research rating from the most recent UK research assessment exercise. Edinburgh’s Geography Department owns “the most significant dedicated GIS computing facility of any University in Europe.”
There is an additional reason I decided to go overseas for my graduate studies. The disciplines of environmental science and land-use planning are understood and undertaken in radically different ways on the two sides of the Atlantic Ocean. I first became aware of this in 1992, when I took a summer internship with the Kent County Council Department of Economic Development in Maidstone, England. In the United Kingdom, the government has significantly more control over privately-owned land than does the gove rnment in the United States. This level of control has permitted British regulators to experiment with approaching certain problems on a regional basis, instead of cleaning up or planning for individual parcels of land. I believe that American policymakers could adopt some of the British innovations to suit our political scenario, with significant possibilities for increased cleanup efficiencies and streamlined land-use planning. GIS, which at its core is a tool for visualizing places and spaces, can play a crucial role in changing the scope of vision for regulators, landowners, and other concerned parties.
And there is a final reason I chose the University of Edinburgh program. I want to live in Scotland so I can get to know the nation and its people in a way that two weeks of tourism do not allow. I am certain that Donnaidh would sympathize with my desire to travel to Scotland, for his great-grandson, John C. McPherson, reported that Donnaidh “… often dreamed of seeing his home; and once, so great was his feeling of homesickness, he started to run in the direction of that spot.” I understand my ancestor’s longing for his native land. I traveled to Scotland for two weeks last April, visiting Inverness, the Isle of Skye, and Edinburgh, and I immediately fell in love with the countryside, the people, and the culture I encountered. While Inverness and the Isle of Skye were undeniably beautiful, it was Edinburgh that completely won my heart. The city is a marvelous metropolis of approximately 600,000 people and hundreds of years of history. I am delighted that I have the opportunity to spend an entire year, living within one-half mile of Edinburgh Castle, St. Giles Cathedral, Holyrood Palace, and the new Scottish Parliament.
I also welcome the chance to be an informal American ambassador, mingling with students from all over the world and creating bonds of friendship that cross national borders. I believe that, upon returning to Philadelphia after the completion of my degree, I will be a continuation of the tradition of Scots-Americans making valuable contributions to our area. It is my intention to locate in Philadelphia and continue to work in the environmental remediation consulting field.
