Since 1995 Celene Elm has held the office of GIS indigenous planning director for the Oneida Nation, a Native American tribal community in Wisconsin. Elm's department is the only all-tribal GIS office in the United States. Serving as director is a heavy responsibility and one that she takes very seriously. 

"We are a sovereign nation that's in the process of buying back our land," she says. "My department's job is to analyze and present geographic data to a committee that makes decisions that will impact our community for generations. So we've got to be accurate." 

GIS stands for "geographic information systems," and prior to 2002 Elm and her four co-workers were severely limited by their "old school" GIS techniques for gathering data. With a huge workload piling up and no technical GIS courses available on or around Wisconsin's Oneida reservation, Elm did a web search to see whether she could find something online. 

She was excited to discover that Penn State's World Campus offers a certificate program in GIS that would allow her to develop cutting-edge GIS skills and learn from one of the best-regarded geography departments in the United States — completely online. The intensely practical courses provided Elm with an immediate return on her investment. 

"While taking these courses, I was accomplishing things that used to take four hours in just five minutes," she explains. "It was fantastic!" 

As a sovereign nation that once spanned 65,000 acres, the Oneida Nation has been decimated over the years, reducing tribal holdings to a mere 15,000 acres, checker-boarded in separate pockets of land across the state of Wisconsin. With no contiguous land base to work with, and no accurate survey data, Elm and her team face a virtual nightmare as they try to determine how best to buy back scattered parcels of land that can be zoned and developed to meet their community's long-term needs. 

"Most developers just want to develop land to maximize profitability, because they see dollar signs," says Elm. "We're looking at it from a perspective of land tenure, with many more restrictions on development. We think about green space … We want to protect the next generation coming up." 

Asked to describe herself, Celene Elm says, "I wear many hats." As a mother, grandmother, hunter, and respected leader in the Oneida tribal community, she certainly enjoys a full and busy life. But that didn't stop her from taking on yet another role in 2002, when she added "World Campus student" to her list of titles. 

"With GIS we are now able to plan for our community," Elm says. "That is the fun part — planning for your grandkids."