Cindy Brewer

Cindy Brewer is the Associate Dean for Faculty Affairs (ADFA) in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST) at Penn State. Her varied organizational efforts include organizing faculty hiring, guiding faculty in tenure and promotion, distributing committee roles, coaching department heads, and refining academic policy in the college.

She is a Professor of Geography and IST, and she has been a member of the Penn State faculty since 1994. Her research and teaching focused on cartographic design. She has authored more than 30 peer-reviewed articles and 60 additional publications and cartographic design resources, generating more than 8,000 citations. She is especially well known for her ColorBrewer online tool for selecting map color schemes.

Brewer has authored four books, including the popular Designing Better Maps with the 3rd edition published in 2024 by Esri Press. Her contributions to cartography have been recognized with the Carl Mannerfelt Gold Medal from the International Cartographic Association (ICA) in 2023, the O.M. Miller Cartographic Medal from the American Geographical Society (AGS) in 2019, and the Henry Gannett Award for Exceptional Contributions to Topographic Mapping from the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) in 2013 for her work with their Center of Excellence for Geospatial Information Science (CEGIS).

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