Consulting, Tutoring and Help Desk
Policies and Procedures

The GISC offers help in GIS to those who have basic questions. As we do not have enough staff to cover walk-in or phone questions, please email your questions to helpdesk@gisc.berkeley.edu, and we will direct your question to the person who is most qualified to answer it. Please be advised that the help desk is in place to answer questions about GIS for those who already have a basic knowledge. If you need training, you should consider signing up for our short courses, or if you need more specific training, one-on-one tutoring is available. If we determine that the level of help you require is beyond the scope of the help desk, meaning that your questions require in-depth answers, or one-on-one hands on assistance, or if your question leads to several questions, we will ask you to set up a tutoring session with us. This is the best way to get the specific information and help you need in those cases.

The cost for tutoring with a grad student employed by us who has in depth GIS knowledge is $25 per hour for UC campus staff, faculty and students, or $37.50 for the community. Tutoring with full time staff is not available. If you would like the GISC to do the work for you, we also offer consulting. Consulting costs are $25 per hour for grad student work, or $60 per hour for GISC full time staff. For non UC projects, the cost is $37.50 for student work, and $90 per hour for regular staff work. Often larger projects will involve student work with staff supervision. If the project is large, we will put together a working budget ahead of time which will include labor and deliverables. In the case of either tutoring or consulting, you must set up a billing account with Rain Simar. She may be contacted by email at rsimar@gisc.berkeley.edu.