Maps not only tell us where we want to go, they help us remember where we’ve been. For one neighborhood and a group of Ohio State students in a geography service-learning course, maps became both a life-line and a lesson in history.

Mapping the Mount Vernon neighborhood on the near east side of Columbus, Ohio turned out to be more than just an academic exercise for students in Geography 580S: Elements of Cartography. Assistant professor Ola Ahlqvist and graduate student Tim Hawthorne challenged the students to create maps for residents so they could find health clinics, access to affordable transportation, food pantries and stores that stock fresh produce. But they also mapped 24 "points of pride in the neighborhood," including the Shiloh Baptist Church which is on the National Register of Historic Places, the Alpha Building on East Long Street, the first black hospital in Columbus, and the St. Clair Hotel, which provided rooms for black people when white hotels would not.

In the classroom, students learned cartography and map design elements, including the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) software. Outside the classroom walls, students collaborated with representatives from Ohio State’s African American and African Studies (AAAS) Community Extension Center and their partnering organizations, including Columbus Public Health, Columbus Urban League, Neighborhood House, Inc., Central Community House, and the Mt. Vernon Avenue District Improvement Association, to design maps illustrating access to low-cost healthcare clinics, food pantries, stores that accepted food stamps and provided fresh fruits and vegetables, employment agencies, and after-school programs for children. They collected data, toured the neighborhood, and met several times with residents and activitsts. One of the students, Caitlin Stone, pointed out how the service project enhanced what she and others learned in class. “If you do a map of China, you don’t actually get to go see what you’ve mapped. Being involved with a community makes it real. If you fail a course, you let yourself down. In this kind of project, you don’t want to let other people down.”

At the end of winter quarter, students presented their maps — ranging from poster-size maps for hanging in prominent community locales to two-sided handouts for distribution to residents — at the AAAS Community Extension Center to a gathering of community members. In May, students were invited to unveil their work before members of the Columbus City Council. The maps are also available to view, on line at http://geography.osu.edu/maps2serve/.

Geography 580S: Elements of Cartography will be offered again, spring quarter, 2010.For information, contact Professor Ola Ahlqvist at Ahlqvist.1@osu.edu or Tim Hawthorne, at hawthorne.20@osu.edu.