Geography Major

Four Core Courses

Core courses emphasize core geographic concepts and ways of creating knowledge; courses in the core are designed to help build frameworks for understanding the world. Students select one core course from each of the following four broad disciplinary core areas:

One Skills Course

Skills courses give you the opportunity to acquire and apply research, literacy, numeracy, and mapping skills for generating and interpreting knowledge. Our goal is for students to become critical thinkers and to have an understanding of how knowledge is created. This course must be approved by the Advisor via a signature on the Worksheet and Learning Plan for majors. Skills courses must be either offered by the Geography Department or offered by other departments with a Geography attribute.

Four Specialization Courses

Specialization courses are a collection of courses that form a coherent combination as judged by the Advisor as indicated by the Advisor’s signature on the Worksheet and Learning Plan. Specialization courses give you an opportunity to explore a specific subject area in depth. Majors are required to take four specialization courses, three of which must be at a 200-level and one of which may be either at a 100-or 200-level. Specialization courses must be either offered by the Geography Department or offered by other departments with a Geography attribute. (An attribute is a characteristic that the registrar uses to make a course appear on the course listings of the attributed department.) We advise but do not require you to take the four Core Courses and the Research Methods course before taking specialization courses, because the specialization courses apply skills in research and problem solving. The Geography Department allows students to perform an internship for credit that can count as 200-level specialization course, upon approval of the advisor.
 

• GEOG 206 - Advanced Vector GIS
• GEOG 216 - Field Methods for Environmental Science
• GEOG 220 - Property and the Global Environment
• GEOG 224 - Economy and Environment
• GEOG 225 - Environmental Politics
• GEOG 226 - Who Fears What and Why: Social Theories of Environmental Risks and Hazards
• GEOG 232 - Landscape Ecology
• GEOG 234 - The Geography of Fire
• GEOG 237 - Feminism, Nature and Culture
• GEOG 252 - Urban Design Research Lab
• GEOG 257 - Internet Geography: Socioeconomic Impacts of Information Technologies
• GEOG 258 - Utopian Visions, Urban Realities: Planning Cities for the 21st Century
• GEOG 260 - Quantitative Environmental Modeling
• GEOG 261 - Decision Methods for Environmental Management and Policy
• GEOG 263 - The Climate System and Global Environmental Change
• GEOG 271 - Groundwater Hydrology and Management
• GEOG 274 - Africa’s Development in Global Context
• GEOG 279 - GIS & Accuracy Assessment
• GEOG 280 - Urban Ecology: Cities as Ecosystems
• GEOG 282 - Advanced Remote Sensing
• GEOG 283 - Terrestrial Ecosystems and Global Change
• GEOG 289 - Development Policy

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Research Methods

Geography 141 Research Design and Methods is required for the major. We advise you to complete this course before taking 200-level courses in geography. Research Methods is offered at least once per year.

Comparable courses in other departments can be substituted for the Geography Research Methods course with the approval of the Advisor. However, this does not reduce the total number of Geography courses required for the major. Thus majors for whom a substitution has been granted will need to take an additional Geography course to ensure that a total of 11 Geography courses are taken.

Capstone

One Capstone credit is required for the major. To meet the Capstone requirement, the student must earn a 200-level credit that relates to the student’s specialization that includes at least one of the following:

1. A graduate level course as indicated by a combined 200/300 level status
2. Human Environment Regional Observatory (HERO) or Forest Ecology Research Lab (FERL) or Polaris
3. Directed Study with a faculty advisor
4. Internship
5. Honors thesis
6. Public Presentation, including academic spree day
7. Research Experience

The student’s Advisor is the judge to determine whether any particular credit satisfies the capstone criterion. The Advisor will make the judgment based on the purpose of the capstone, which is for the student to integrate content and skills in Geography, as applied to a particular topic. The student must obtain the Advisors’ permission on the Capstone Form at the back of this guide, and then deliver the form to the Undergraduate Program Assistant before beginning the qualifying activity and before registration for the 200-level credit. Upon completion of the Capstone credit, the student must obtain on the Capstone Form the permission of the professor who awards the Capstone credit, and then submit the form to the Undergraduate Program Assistant.

Worksheet, Learning Plan, and Learning Synopsis

Each student is required to prepare a formal Worksheet and Learning Plan upon declaring a major or minor in Geography, and each major is required to complete a Learning Synopsis by the second week of their final semester. Students may use the forms in the back of the Guide to the Major.

Double Majoring

All majors must complete 11 Geography courses in accordance with the plan described in the Guide to the Major, even when they have a second major. Two credits at most can count simultaneously for a first and second major. University rules that dictate Double majors are in the University’s Blue Book.