Texas State University-San Marcos (Texas State) is a comprehensive university with over 25,000 students as of September, 2002. The Department of Geography at Texas State is the largest geography department in the United States with 30 full time faculty members, 198 Graduate Students (163 Master's and 35 Ph.D.), and 516 undergraduate majors. The Department of Geography sponsors three internationally recognized research centers, The Texas Center for Geographic Information Science (TxGISci), The Grosvenor Center for Geographic Education, and The James and Marilyn Lovell Center for Environmental Geography and Hazards Research. The department has been actively involved in research and teaching in Geographic Information Science (GIScience).

All faculty members affiliated with the TxGISci Center are conducting basic research in GIScience, teaching GIScience courses, and/or using GIScience and technology in their research.  Examples of current research topic areas in the TxGISci Center include:

A number of other departments/units on the Texas State campus have been using GIS for research purposes. These departments/units include the Center for Archaeological Studies (CAS) at the Department of Anthropology in the College of Liberal Arts, the Department of Health Services Research in the College of Health Professions, the Department of Criminal Justice in the College of Applied Arts, the Department of Mathematics and its Proposed Program in Information Science, the Department of Biology, and the Department of Computer Science in the College of Science, the university Freeman Ranch, and the Department of Agriculture in the College of Applied Arts.

The University Consortium for Geographic Information Science (UCGIS) is a non-profit organization of universities and other research institutions dedicated to advancing our understanding of geographic processes and spatial relationships through improved theory, methods, technology, and data.