Affiliated Scholars
Director, Northern Ohio Data and Information Service (NODIS), Levin College
College Fellow and Faculty, Levin College
Research Director, The Center for Community Solutions
Ph.D., Kent State University
M.A., The University of Cincinnati
B.A., Kent State University
An empirical researcher by training, Dr. Mark Salling manages a team of researchers, programmers, and student employees involved in data dissemination, demographic analysis, and urban and geographic information systems (GIS) applications. In this capacity, Dr. Salling has developed widely recognized expertise in election demographics and administrative procedures related to reapportionment and redistricting. This work includes the application of database and GIS technologies in election geography management.
Via contract with the State of Ohio, Dr. Salling led projects to develop the database used for the redistricting of Ohio’s congressional and General Assembly districts in both 1991 and 2001. The more recent redistricting database contractual project, initiated in 1996 and completed in 2001, included working with Ohio county Boards of Elections in many critical tasks including re-drawing precinct boundaries, coordinating local boundary delineation and the Census Bureau’s geographic database development, estimating population and demographic data for non-census political and administrative units, and training county boards of elections in the use of a computer-based redistricting system. Dr. Salling and NODIS also served for four years as a consultant for the Cuyahoga County (Cleveland and suburbs) Board of Elections on database and GIS applications for its elections administration and management operations, and served similar functions for the Summit County elections board.
Dr. Salling’s analytical expertise was also utilized in a federal court case concerning the racial disparities associated with various voting technologies. He has provided additional data and analysis concerning the socioeconomic and racial implications of the November 2004 election’s provisional balloting rates in Cuyahoga County.
Dr. Salling holds numerous other leadership positions concerning the use of census data. He is designated as the state’s liaison with the Census Bureau on redistricting database development. He chairs the Cleveland region's Census statistical areas committee and also serves on the Council of the Ohio Geographically Referenced Information Program (OGRIP). Dr. Salling also leads the Ohio GIS-Network, a consortium of Ohio's rural and urban universities collaborating in GIS development and applications across the state. At the national level, Dr. Salling is a board member of the Urban and Regional Information Systems Association (URISA) and has been the editor of the URISA Conference Proceedings since 1986. He received the URISA Service awards in 1987 and 2000. Dr. Salling is also certified as a Geographic Information Systems Professional (GISP) by the Geographic Information Systems Certification Institute (GISCI).
Dr. Salling was a recipient of a Visiting Fellowship from the National Science Foundation funded National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. He has received other professional awards for his distinguished empirical work and leadership. He has published papers dealing with computer applications in planning, data dissemination, geographic information systems, poverty, residential mobility, environmental equity, and demography. Dr. Salling has taught courses on Geographic Information Systems, urban geography, urban spatial systems, statistical and computer methods, and demography at Cleveland State University.