As a senior at Southern Cayuga High School three years ago, Tiffany Edwards wasn't sure what she wanted to do with her life post graduation. Edwards, who lives in Genoa, enjoyed times when her physics teacher, Carl Scheffler, who would have students go outside and play around with global positioning systems units he had on hand. The new-looking technology certainly held her attention.

But a class trip to Cayuga Community College three years ago - where she saw a demonstration and presentation for a geographic information systems (GIS) course offered by the school - really grabbed Edwards and helped her clarify the direction she wanted to take.

“I liked when they brought us into the lab to find images of our neighborhoods,” she said. Edwards was referring to a technological “test drive” for students, using GIS to examine and explore their neighborhoods - down to the block and the house.

Geographic Information Systems are basically computer programs that capture, store, analyze and display data about the planet Earth. The technology can be used with satellite images of the planet - to pinpoint coastlines and forests, or locate specific buildings in specific neighborhoods - to illustrate phenomena from natural disasters to ambulance routes. The technology can even help banks determine what areas of a region they might cover better.

The college launched an associate's degree program in GIS almost six years ago, with the help of a NASA division that focuses on Earth, as opposed to space. That branch funds what is now known as the Institute for the Application of Geospatial Technology - headquartered at Cayuga Community College. IAGT supports the college's GIS program.

When Edwards first enrolled at the school, she decided to check it out.

“It's so hands-on and something new, and it was what I was looking for,” said Edwards, now an intern at IAGT.

Jean Miller, 32, felt the same way. Working at a retail store that was on the brink of closing, the Seneca County resident decided to explore the GIS course and was hooked.

“I always loved maps and reading atlases. I wondered, how do you know the road goes here, or this is the way the water goes?” Miller said. Now, at her geology teacher's request, she's using GIS technology to plot glacier effects in the Finger Lakes region and area changes to topographical maps. The project, part of an advanced GIS curriculum, is for Miller's geology teacher, who she says until now has been letting students work off area maps “from the 1950s.”

Set to graduate in May, Miller said she thinks about applying her new skills to emergency management in her area. Mapping technology lets E.M.S. technicians or firefighters know, for instance, where the roads might take detours or how they might be rerouted to respond to emergencies even faster.

“If they're implementing GIS in Seneca County, emergency management will probably be the first area to get it,” Miller said.

Ironically, consumers of GIS technology often don't understand the laborious process that mapping requires. Specialists travel out to different regions, enter data incrementally into a GIS unit and return to their computers to analyze the data, repeatedly returning to a field until it is fully mapped out.

“My geology teacher initially wanted the three new maps in a week,” Miller said. “I had to tell him that wasn't going to happen.”