Professor Laxmi Ramasubramanian, PhD, AICP chairs the Department of Urban and Regional Planning at San José State University. An academic with over twenty years of experience in participatory GIS and community engagement , Laxmi led the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) as President from 2012-2014 when she advocated for UCGIS to launch a mentoring program for women in academia. Her efforts, alongside veteran GIS women leaders and the support of the UCGIS Board helped to launch the TRELIS program in 2018.
About TRELIS
TRELIS is a cohort mentoring and leadership development program for faculty and research scholars working in academic institutions. The TRELIS model explicitly rejects conventional linear (ladders) pathways of professional development, emphasizing the “trellis metaphor” as a framework that prepares academic scholars to develop their own career pathways within or outside academia. TRELIS Fellows are change agents in creating institutional transformation and systemic change. The TRELIS framework has successfully been deployed at national as well as sub-regional scales and has created an intentional community for academic women in GIS.