The Department of Geography provides a comprehensive program that reflects the discipline’s three main areas – human geography, physical geography, and spatial analysis. The department’s courses allow students to explore the linkages between human activities and natural systems. Students taking geography courses should develop factual knowledge, critical thinking, and analytic skills. Training in geography allows students to know where things are located, why they are located where they are, how and why places differ, how human activity shapes and is shaped by the natural environment, and how to analyze human-environment interactions.
Click here to download the brochure of the Geography Underaduate Program. If you have any questions about the Geography Undergraduate Program, please contact the Director of Undergraduate Studies, Dr. Solange Muñoz.
Catalog Entries
- Geography Major, BA – Climate and Climate Change Concentration
- Geography Major, BA – Geospatial Science and Technology Concentration
- Geography Major, BA – Landscapes and Environment Concentration
- Geography Major, BA – Space, Society, and Culture Concentration
- Geography Major, BA – World Cities and Economies Concentration
Geography Majors
Climate and Climate Change Concentration
The Climate and Climate Change Concentration provides students with the knowledge necessary to understand past, present, and future global climate patterns and trends. Courses focus on understanding the foundations of global climate patterns, how climate has changed through time, and how climate change has affected people, plants, and animals, the landscape, and natural hazards. Students in this concentration will gain skills in assessing past climate change through proxy records, understanding current weather and climate patterns, and evaluating when and how much climate can be expected to change in the near and far future.
Geospatial Science and Technology Concentration
The Geospatial Science and Technology concentration provides a practical understanding of GIS technology and its application in various fields, such as natural resource management, marketing, disaster response, social welfare, etc. Students explore a range of GIS topics and gain hands-on experience in this concentration. The Geospatial Science and Technology concentration will help Geography majors pursue jobs in many different career paths that require more technical expertise.
Landscapes and Environmental Change Concentration
The Landscapes and Environmental Change concentration focuses on understanding how landscape and environmental changes, hazards, and disasters have altered the earth’s surface and impacted human populations and societies. Some key questions addressed in the courses in this concentration concern the role humans have played in facilitating landscape and environmental changes. The students completing this concentration will be poised for careers in academia and jobs associated with environmental management and consulting, landscape design and planning, ecological and hazards risk assessment, water resources management, and others.
Space, Society, and Culture Concentration
Courses in the Space, Society and Culture concentration study how people, groups and communities create distinctive landscapes, how they claim, occupy, and even struggle over places, and how they identify with places and animate our surroundings with meaning. Students learn to critically examine their own culture and others’ ways of life, thereby gaining a greater understanding of themselves and the world at large. Skills developed in this concentration can be applied to employment in education, government and international organizations, urban planning, non-profit organizations, travel and tourism, businesses, international trade, and other fields.
World Cities and Economies Concentration
The World Cities and Economies concentration encompasses the spatial elements of economic activities as well as the dynamism of cities. Students will engage with urban and regional analysis and several topics within economic and urban geography. This concentration prepares students for careers in government, international organizations, and the private sector, as well as jobs in urban planning, business, and other fields.