Lawrence S. Hamilton

Larry Hamilton, emeritus professor of natural resources at Cornell University, who played a leading role in the worldwide conservation of mountain areas, passed away on October 6, 2016, at the age of 91.

Lawrence Stanley Hamilton was born in Toronto in 1925. He couldn’t wait to get out of the city and started working in logging camps in the North Woods during the summers while he was still a teenager. During the Second World War he served in the Royal Navy Fleet Air Arm as a pilot. Both his early connection to forests and his exposure to the horrors of war went on to shape the rest of his life.

After the war Hamilton enrolled at the University of Toronto to study forestry while also working as Zone Forester in Ontario. For postgraduate studies he moved to the College of Forestry at Syracuse University, completing his master’s degree in 1950 with a dissertation entitled “An economic analysis of the cutting of sugar maple (Acer saccharum Marsh.) in small woodlots in the vicinity of Syracuse.” This was followed by a doctorate in natural resource policy at the University of Michigan; his dissertation, completed in 1962, was entitled “An analysis of New York State’s Forest Practice Act.”

Hamilton joined the Department of Natural Resources at Cornell University in 1951 and stayed there for 30 years before becoming professor emeritus. He was an exceptional educator, advisor, and pioneer of courses in forest ecology, watershed studies, interdisciplinary collaboration, and international resource issues. In the early 1970s, he produced one of the first documentations of tropical rainforest deforestation (Venezuela) and mangrove destruction (Trinidad).

In 1980 he moved to Hawaii and spent the next 13 years as a Senior Fellow in the Environment and Policy Institute at the East-West Center, an institution which aims to promote technological and cultural interchange between people in the United States, Asia and the Pacific region. He traveled all over the region including Thailand, Western Samoa, Nepal, Indonesia, and Australia doing pioneering education in forest hydrology and tropical forestry, convening workshops and authoring hundreds of applied conservation publications.

While in Asia Hamilton became interested in mountains, recognizing them as unique and very delicate ecosystems, and suggesting that conservation efforts that work in many other environments can be devastating for mountains.

Since the 1970s he had been a member of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Commission on National Parks and Protected Areas (subsequently known as the World Commission on Protected Areas (WCPA)), but it was during the 1980s that he began to draw the Commission’s attention to mountains.

Hamilton and a small group of fellow scientists launched a concerted call for mountain conservation, publishing “The State of the World’s Mountains: A Global Report.” They took their message to a wider audience as “An Appeal for the Mountains,” which was presented to the 1992 United Nations Conference on Environment and Development (Rio Earth Summit) and became the basis for the mountain chapter in Agenda 21. This effort, and the ensuing awareness of mountain ecology, is the work of which Hamilton said he was most proud.

Over the next 25 years, under his leadership, the mountain theme became an important element of the WCPA’s work and he built a strong global network of mountain enthusiasts and experts. He brought them together in numerous WCPA mountain workshops including Hawaii (1991), Australia (1995), Canada (1996) and South Africa (2003).

On the ground he provided guidance and advice to mountain protected areas including parks and reserves in Australia, Bhutan, Canada, Ecuador, USA and Nepal. He championed tropical montane cloud forests, corridors of ecological connectivity, trans-border cooperation for conservation and peace, understanding of mountains as water towers, and the spiritual/cultural values of mountains.

His formidable paper legacy is to be found in almost 400 publications including: IUCN guidelines on Transboundary Protected Areas for Peace and Co-operation (2001) and Planning and Managing Mountain Protected Areas (2004); and Managing Mountain Protected Areas: Challenges and Responses for the 21st Century (2004). He made special mountain contributions to PARKS (1996), the IUCN Bulletin (2002), and a World Heritage publication (2002). From 1992 until 2015, he also edited 89 editions of the quarterly newsletter Mountain Protected Areas Update.

For his work Hamilton received the New York State Conservation Council’s Forest Conservationist of the Year award (1969); the Environmental Achiever Award from the UN Environment Program (1987); the IUCN/WCPA Packard International Parks Merit Award (2003); Hawai’i University’s Distinguished Scientist award for work on Cloud Forest Conservation (2004); the Gold Medal for Mountain Conservation Leadership from the King Albert I Memorial Foundation in Switzerland (2004); and Honorary IUCN Membership (2008).

In 1993 Hamilton and his wife moved to Vermont to be near family. They set up home in the small rural community of Charlotte where they loved the natural surroundings and the four seasons. They also liked the sense of neighborliness and civic participation, and Hamilton was proud to be a local tree warden. He also served for over two decades as a trustee of The Nature Conservancy (TNC) Vermont where he shared his expertise through many local conservation initiatives. Just two days before his death, he was delighted to learn that they named the trail in the local TNC forest preserve the “Hamilton Trail.”

As well as the local engagement, bigger conservation issues continued to concern him. For example, in 2011 he travelled to Washington, DC to protest at the White House against the Tar Sands Pipeline Initiative. Beyond his conservation activism, he was also a pacifist and was an active member of Veterans for Peace.

Lawrence Hamilton’s life was grounded in a love of nature. He said, “If I can be responsible for saving one little chunk, I will have had a successful life.” In reality, his life’s work ensured the protection of mountain areas passing through whole continents, and their preservation as biological and cultural treasures for our future generations. He will be remembered for his vision, commitment, enthusiasm and youthful energy. Although not a geographer per se, his academic work and practical action was an inspiration to many, including members of the AAG’s Mountain Geography Specialty Group.

Larry is survived by his wife of 36 years, Linda; children Bruce, Anne and Lynne; as well as seven grandchildren and one great-grandchild.

Main sources:
New York Times obituary, October 2016
Obituary on IUCN website, October 2016
Blog by Gillian Randall, November 2011

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Ary J. Lamme III

Ary Lamme, a cultural and historical geographer and professor emeritus at the University of Florida, passed away in September 2016 at the age of 76.

Ary Johannes Lamme III was born in New York on June 30, 1940. His grandfather, Ary Johannes Lamme Sr. had emigrated from Holland in the late nineteenth century and settled in New York.

By the time he was a small boy, the family had moved to Westminster in western Maryland, although his father still worked in New York and commuted home at weekends. From there the family had regular outings to the battlefields at Gettysburg and Lamme remembered enjoying the countryside, the war stories, and having picnics together. This was perhaps the gestation of a lifelong interest in historic landscapes, and Gettysburg would be a central example in one of his major works later in his professional life.

At McDonogh School on the outskirts of Baltimore, Maryland, Lamme enjoyed mathematics and the social sciences. He then went on to Principia College, Illinois, for undergraduate studies, graduating in 1962. He later acknowledged the role of particular geography, history and English professors there who enabled him to develop and use important scholarly tools.

Next Lamme moved to the University of Illinois for a master’s degree in geography, graduating in 1965. Military service then intervened and he served as an instructor squadron commander in the U.S. Air Force in Vietnam.

After an unexpected release from the military, one of his former professors from Illinois enabled him to enter Syracuse University for a doctorate. There he was particularly influenced by David Sopher and Donald Meinig and their work on historic and cultural landscapes. His dissertation, completed in 1968, was entitled “The Spatial and Ecological Characteristics of the Diffusion of Christian Science in the United States: 1875-1910.”

His first teaching position was at the State University of New York at Cortland before moving to the University of Florida at Gainesville in the early 1970s, where he stayed for over three decades.

Lamme was interested in different aspects of cultural and historical geography, as reflected in his publications which cover topics including the historical development and spatial distribution of religious groups, the cultural landscape of the Amish homelands, the sense of vernacular regional identity in Florida, and a comparison of the physical characteristics of spaces where people were enslaved and where they were freed.

One of his most noted publications was the book “America’s Historic Landscapes: Community Power and the Preservation of Four National Historic Sites” (1990) which explored historic landscapes and how they acquire meaning. He used four case studies – St Augustine in Florida, Colonial National Historical Park in Virginia, Sackets Harbor in New York, and Gettysburg in Pennsylvania – to explore the community power issues involved in landscape preservation.

Lamme was a long-time member of the American Association of Geographers and recognized for 50 years of continuous membership in 2014. He was also involved in the Southeast Division (SEDAAG) and had presented his work at the Race, Ethnicity and Place Conference.

Ary Lamme will be remembered fondly by many former colleagues. He leaves behind his wife, Sandra, and two adult children, Laurel and Ary Johannes IV.

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Sally E. Eden

Sally Eden, professor of Human Geography at the University of Hull, UK, whose research explored issues of environmental perception, sustainable food production and consumption, passed away peacefully in September 2016 after a period of illness.

Sally E. Eden was born in 1967. She studied for a bachelor’s degree at the University of Durham followed by a doctorate at the University of Leeds.

Her first academic posts were at the University of Bristol and Middlesex University where she taught geography and environmental studies before joining the Department of Geography at the University of Hull in 1998 where she served for the last 18 years.

Eden’s research explored how people relate to the environment through consumption, leisure, knowledge and policy.

One strand of work investigated how nongovernmental organizations use and communicate environmental information, and how environmental science is used to influence policy and consumption. For this she focused on water environments, researching how river restoration is designed and justified and how laypeople get involved with and make sense of river management in the UK.

Another area of research was how ideas of sustainable consumption, environmentally friendly products and green lifestyles are constructed, legitimated, sold, understood and put into practice (or not). She explored these issues through case studies such as the environmental certification of organic food, sustainably farmed fish and well managed forests.

From 2013-15 she was Co-Investigator on a major project funded jointly by the UK Research Councils called Digital Economy: Food Trust. The goal was to explore how digital tools can promote more sustainable production and consumption of food through connecting producers and consumers. It involved the creation of three prototype apps – ‘Food Cloud’, ‘FoodCrowd’ and ‘Shopstamp.’ One of these, for example, enabled shoppers to scan QR codes on food products to access information about the farm where the item was produced.

Eden’s work was widely published in leading journals of geography, environment and rural studies. Sadly she passed away before publication of her book, Environmental Publics (Routledge, December 2016). This volume explores how ordinary people think about the environment as they go about their daily lives; how they engage with environmental issues in different contexts of work, leisure and home; and whether thinking about the environment make them do things differently.

Eden was a member of the AAG and a regular attendee at the Annual Meetings. She was also one of the Section Editors for the AAG’s The International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment, and Technology (Wiley, 2017). She was responsible for the “Environmental Policy, Management, and Governance” section, and also wrote three entries for the encyclopedia: Environmental Science, Environmental Restoration, and Environmental Issues and Public Understanding (the latter with Hilary Geoghegan). The AAG team will remember her as an excellent editor as well as a lovely person with whom to work. Her colleagues at the University of Hull and beyond will miss her greatly.

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John A. Enman

John A. Enman, Ph.D., passed away on August 17, 2016, at the age of 94. He was born on September 11, 1921 in Newton,. Mass., the son of the late John A. and Grace (Johnston) Enman. He graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School, New York City and went on to receive his B. A. degree in Geography and Geology from the University of Maine in 1943. Having previously enlisted in the Reserve Army Corps, he was called up for active duty in the Army Air Corps in 1943. As he had been a geography major in college, he was selected to become a cartographer, serving in that capacity in India until the end of World War II.

After returning from the war, John earned an M.A. degree in Geography from Harvard University and went on to teach at Washington and Jefferson University in Washington, Pa. He joined the faculty of what is now Bloomsburg University in 1959, where he was a professor of geography in the Geography and Earth Science Department.

Dr. Enman earned his Ph.D. degree from the University of Pittsburg in 1962, having completed a study of the historical geography of Western Pennsylvania as the basis of his dissertation. Upon retirement in 1984, he continued his scholarly research. His book, ”Another Time, Another World: Pennsylvania Bituminous Coal, Coke and Communities” was published in 2010.

He was preceded in death by his wife, the former Betty (Betsy) Buckles, on September 18, 2005.

He is survived by a sister, Elaine Enman, York Beach, Maine, and a cousin, Martin Johnston, Harleysville, Pa., as well as numerous friends and university colleagues.

From the Dean W. Kriner Funeral Home

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Leland R. Pederson

Lee Pederson, Emeritus Professor of Geography and Regional Development at the University of Arizona, who was a Latin Americanist and a historian of geographic thought, died on July 27, 2016, at the age of 88.

Leland R. Pederson was born on January 2, 1928, in Bismarck, North Dakota. He earned a bachelor’s degree in geography from Valley State Teachers College, in Valley City, ND, and a master’s degree in history from Colorado State College of Education in Greeley. Drafted during the Korean War, Pederson was posted to Fort Ord, in Monterey, California, where he taught typing.

Upon his discharge from the Army, Pederson continued his academic studies in the geography doctoral program at the University of California, Berkeley. There he met Lucy Valintino, a graduate student in Spanish. Lucy was taken with his mercurial personality, which, over six subsequent decades, would prove a worthy match for her own forceful character. The two wed and traveled to Chile; there they lived from 1959−1960, while he undertook fieldwork for his dissertation, carried out under the direction of Professor James J. Parsons.

Pederson’s development as a scholar was greatly influenced by the vigorous tutelage on writing provided by Professor Edward P. Leahy to the Berkeley graduate student group. He had a life-long love affair with the English language and would become a stickler for proper usage, grammar, and spelling.

Taking his first teaching position in the geography department at Northwestern in 1961, he would be remembered by a number of faculty colleagues and graduate students there, as well as later on at the University of Arizona, for his critiques and constructive criticisms of their papers at the pre- (and post-) publication stage. Pederson frequently consulted an unabridged American-English dictionary, which he kept for many years resting on a stand in the Arizona department’s conference room, immediately adjacent to his office.

Pederson’s Ph.D. dissertation entitled “The Mining Industry of Norte Chico, Chile” was accepted by the Berkeley geography department in 1965. He continued service on the faculty at Northwestern through the spring of 1968. That fall, he and Lucy moved to Tucson, where they each would teach for the better part of three decades. Pederson took up a faculty position in the Department of Geography and Area Development, then a unit of the College of Business and Public Administration, while his wife began many years instructing language courses in Spanish and Italian.

Throughout Pederson’s 27 years at Arizona he taught first-year Human Geography, regional courses on Middle America and South America—staple classes for the B.A. and M.A. degrees offered through university’s Latin American Studies program—and a graduate-level History of Geographic Thought. The History of Geographic Thought was a mainstay of the required curricula taken by generations of Arizona geography M.A. and Ph.D. students. Like his mentor Professor Leahy, Professor Pederson left his forceful impress on the writing skills (and psyches!) of numerous emerging scholars.

After only a single initial year of service on the Arizona faculty, Pederson was named Acting Head in the fall of 1969. Soon thereafter he was appointed to an official term as Head and would lead the department until January, 1975. During the Pederson years, the geography Ph.D. program was approved in October, 1972, with the first doctoral applicants admitted to begin studies in August, 1973. Also during his tenure as Head, the university’s Committee on Urban Planning was merged with the department of Geography and Area Development, and the name of the department changed to Geography and Regional Development.

A long-time member of the AAG, the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers and the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, Professor Pederson served as Program Chair for the April 1988 Annual Meetings of the AAG held in Phoenix, and twice as APCG Program Chair, arranging the agenda for two Annual Meetings held in Tucson: in June 1976 and September 1991. Graduate students whose theses and dissertations Pederson supervised were Wayne Sigleo (1971), Peter Hoffman (1974), David McGrath (1983), Steven Turiano (1984), Linda Lizarraga (1985), Eric Shapiro (1989), Susan Moore (1992), and James Keese (1996).

Until his retirement in 1995, Pederson actively participated in faculty oversight of the university’s libraries. He continued to exert a strong influence and an unstinting insistence on the maintenance of standards of excellence for geography at the University of Arizona. He watched, generally with approval, as geography on campus advanced far beyond its initial humble roots as a small undergraduate program in the business school to its current position as a top-tier, full-spectrum, doctoral-degree-granting School of Geography and Development, now home to 25 regular faculty and over 25 adjunct and affiliated faculty and offering four graduate degrees and four undergraduate majors. Read his (2002) Geography and Regional Development at the University of Arizona: A History.

Until ill health precluded it in his final year and a half, he continued to pay weekly visits to the School of Geography and Development and, in his geographic historian way, to follow and assess the activities of its faculty and graduate students.

Recently he was asked by a publisher to have an updated version of his dissertation translated and published in Spanish: This was a project he undertook with his characteristic zeal for all-things-editorial. The book is now in its second printing after the first sold out.

Lee Pederson is survived by his wife, Lucy, and daughter, Lisa. Contributions in Lee’s memory may be made, per his wishes, in support of the University of Arizona’s School of Geography and Development through the University of Arizona Foundation.

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Bradley T. Cullen

Brad Cullen, professor emeritus in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at the University of New Mexico, passed away unexpectedly on June 4, 2016 at the age of 65.

Bradley Thomas Cullen was born on February 8, 1951 and raised in Portola, northern California. He studied for his bachelor’s degree at Chico State University, California, then for his master’s degree at Miami University, Ohio.

Next he moved to Michigan State University for a PhD in geography. His doctoral dissertation, completed in 1980, was entitled “Wood products plants in northwestern California: changes in location and size” and examined the forestry industry.

Cullen moved to Albuquerque in 1979 to take up an assistant professor post in the Department of Geography at the University of New Mexico (UNM) where he was to stay until retirement in 2014. During his career at UNM, he served as department chair and was instrumental at one point in advocating for the department when its closure was under consideration. Without his major contributions, the important department of today would be significantly poorer and may not even exist.

Cullen’s work spanned social and economic geography, with his primary research interests being industrial geography and problems related to the environment and energy consumption.Among his many publications was a notable book Sustainable Development and Geographical Space: Issues of Population, Environment, Globalization and Education in Marginal Regions co-authored with Heikki Jussila and Roser Majoral (Ashgate 2002).

He became a member of the American Association of Geographers in 1979 and was actively involved in the Southwest Division, including serving as the Chair in 1992. In addition, he was a strong supporter of the Applied Geography Conferences, serving on the Board of Directors for many years and helping to organize numerous paper sessions. He was also involved in the International Geographical Union including serving on the Steering Committee of its Commission on Marginalization, Globalization and Regional and Local Response. Other service included being a member of the editorial board for the Scottish Geographical Journal.

Cullen had been teaching geography on a part-time basis at Sierra College, CA, since January this year. He had also recently gained certification to teach English as a second language, and had been preparing to serve with the Peace Corps in Mongolia until his health required a change in plans.

Away from his professional life, Cullen enjoyed performances of the New Mexico Philharmonic Orchestra and the Santa Fe Opera. He was an excellent cook reputed for his desserts but also loved eating out locally in Albuquerque. In addition, he loved dogs and was always seen driving around town in his Mini Cooper.

Cullen will be remembered as a consistently supportive and friendly colleague. Thousands of students he taught over the years will also remember his dry and wonderful classroom humor. He is survived by his older brother John, and sister-in-law Lorraine, and his beloved nephews and their families.

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Karl W. Butzer

Karl W. Butzer, a geographer, cultural ecologist and environmental archaeologist, who was a world-class scholar and particularly known for his fieldwork in countries across the world, passed away on May 4, 2016, at the age of 81.

Funeral information:

Visitation – Thursday, May 12th, 6-7pm, at Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Services, 2620 S Congress Ave, Austin, TX 78704
Rosary – Thursday, May 12th, 7pm, at Weed-Corley-Fish Funeral Services, 2620 S Congress Ave, Austin, TX 78704
Funeral mass – Friday, May 13, 11am, at St. John Neumann Catholic Church, 5455 Bee Cave Rd, West Lake Hills, TX 78746

A full obituary will follow soon.

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Guido Weigend

Guido Weigend, who had a long career as a professional geographer, college dean and professor, and spy, passed away on April 1, 2016, at the age of 96.

Guido Gustav Weigend was born on January 2, 1920, in the small Austrian town of Zeltweg but grew up in Vienna and attended school there. In 1938, at the age of 18, he watched as the German army marched into Austria and annexed his country. Soon afterward, he found himself drafted into the German army. Naturally alarmed by this prospect, his father – then living in Chicago – encouraged him to travel to America.

Like most European refugees of the period, his route was circuitous. He first went to Sofia, Bulgaria where his mother co-owned a coffee shop. There he spoke to someone in the American consulate who successfully helped manage the difficult feat of getting him an exit visa. He left Europe by passing through Italy and North Africa, eventually making his way to the United States.

Weigend was a linguist with facility in several European languages, so his transition to life in America was relatively painless. He took advantage of his good fortune, timing, and location by soon enrolling at the University of Chicago, graduating in 1942. He became a US citizen in 1943.

His talent for languages (he spoke eight) and his familiarity with European geography and cultures was put to quick use by his adopted country. Between March 1943 and December 1945 he served in the US Army in the office of the OSS (forerunner to the CIA), going on several missions behind German lines during the war. It was long suspected, although never completely confirmed by him until late in his life, that he continued with clandestine activities long after the war.

Returning to the University of Chicago after 1945, Weigend completed a master’s degree with a thesis entitled “Water Supply of Central and Southern Germany.” Soon afterward, he began doctoral work, completing his dissertation on “The Cultural Pattern of South Tyrol” in 1949. His dissertation was published by the University of Chicago as Research Paper, No. 3. He proudly considered himself a professional geographer for the rest of his life.

After his return to Chicago, he met and married Areta Kelble after a six week courtship. They had a common link – both had been in Europe during the war, she in the Red Cross. Their long marriage ended with the passing of Areta in 1993.

While working on his doctoral dissertation he taught at Beloit College, Wisconsin, but upon completion of his Ph.D. he accepted a job at Rutgers University, New Jersey, where he spent 27 years on the geography faculty, teaching students, researching and writing. He wrote scholarly articles on many topics, most of them on Europe, and on ports and shipping in general. Two of the articles were published in French, and he reviewed several French and German books in major American journals.

Weigend rose steadily through the ranks at Rutgers from Assistant Professor to Professor. He chaired the Geography Department for 16 years between 1951 and 1967, and he then served as Associate Dean from 1972 to 1976.

In 1976 he headed west to Arizona State University (ASU) where he assumed the position of Dean of Liberal Arts and Professor of Geography. His leadership skills and personal style as Dean of the largest college on campus were especially appreciated during the next eight years as the university continued its transition into a major research institution.

During his years as Dean and afterward, the Weigends frequently hosted parties at their home a few miles from ASU. These gatherings were joyous, entertaining, and stimulating affairs. Invitations were a pleasant and coveted perquisite of their friendship and generosity.

Stepping down from the Dean position in 1984, Weigend took a one-year sabbatical in southern Africa, producing additional scholarly papers, including two on Namibia. Upon his return to Arizona, he re-entered the Geography Department full time, mentoring students, doing research, and providing a living example of how to be a scholar, an administrator, and a gentleman all at the same time. He retired from ASU in 1989, and lived in Phoenix the rest of his life.

Guido and Areta Weigend are survived by the three children that they welcomed into the world: Kenneth Weigend is national sales manager at WR Lynch in the San Francisco Bay Area; Nina Wilkey-Olejarczyk is a physician in Glendale, Arizona; and Cynthia Buness is an attorney in Paradise Valley, Arizona now focused on patient advocacy work.

Written by Malcolm Comeaux, Martin J. Pasqualetti, and Cynthia Buness

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Chris Mayda

Chris Mayda, a Professor in the Department of Geography and Geology at Eastern Michigan University, who was a champion for sustainability and alternatives ways of thinking and living, passed away in March 2016 after a long-term illness.

Mayda’s entry into academia came as change of career and life-direction in her mid-forties. At the time she was investing in real estate in California but realized that it wasn’t for her.

In her own words, “I went back to school so that I could be who I really am, a geographer. I live it and breathe it every day.” She was interested in the intersection of humanities and science, particularly how people deal with their land.

She studied for a master’s degree in geography at California State University, Northridge, graduating in 1994, followed by a PhD in geography at University of Southern California, with a dissertation entitled “Passion on the Plains: Pigs on the Panhandle” examining the commercial hog industry. She completed this in 1998 at age 50, the same time her son graduated from high school.

While many institutions may not consider offering a 50-something year old their first a tenure-track position, the Department of Geography and Geology at Eastern Michigan University (EMU) took her on in Fall 1999 as an Assistant Professor. It was a decision that they did not regret: it was once claimed that she accomplished the work of three faculty members in her fifteen years at EMU.

She was hired to teach in the department’s Historic Preservation and Geography programs, including her signature approach to the American Cultural Landscapes course, as well as a course in Settlement Geography.

Within a few semesters, she also began teaching the course on the Regional Geography of the United States and Canada, which ultimately became the most popular upper division regional course in the recent history of the geography program, especially among College of Education students and Geography majors.

Moreover, this teaching assignment initiated a ten-year investment of her time developing and writing A Regional Geography of the United States and Canada: Toward a Sustainable Future which was published by Rowman & Littlefieldin 2012. In the course of researching this book, she visited all 50 U.S. states and the provinces of Canada looking at rural and agricultural geography, and also undertook a six-week, 600-mile trek along the U.S./Canadian border. The book discussed of the physical and human geography of the United States and Canada while weaving in the key themes of environment and sustainability. It demonstrated the diversity and richness of each region as well as the fundamental connections that link the continent. This book remains the only regional geography text with a focus on sustainable human-environment interaction.

She took a holistic and ecological perspective, believing that humans needed to re-evaluate their goals and adopt a more sustainable mindset. She utilized systems thinking to conceptualize this. Her personal and research interests in sustainability led to the development of a General Education course titled Thinking Sustainably, and she spearheaded the development of a sustainability minor for the Environment & Society component of the Interdisciplinary Environmental Science and Society (IESS) degree program.

She also collaborated on special topics courses including Sustainable Cities and Unthinking Consumerism. During a recent two semester sabbatical leave she wrote a new book on sustainability: Think: The Renaissance of the Ecological Age, which was under review for publication at the time of her death.

She also sought to live out a more-sustainable and less-consuming lifestyle in practice. She was known for her efforts to make the EMU campus and community more green, promoting bike riding and the more efficient use of energy resources on campus.

Mayda was a prolific scholar in terms of her numerous publications, professional and public presentations, and will be both long remembered and missed for her abundant energy and passion for teaching and mentoring her students. In the words of a recent graduate of the Historic Preservation program: “She definitely changed my life. She was unique and I especially appreciated that she embraced change, reinventing herself along the way.”

With thanks to Eastern Michigan University for most of the material in this obituary.

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Glenn Sebastian

Glenn Sebastian, Associate Professor Emeritus at the University of South Alabama, who spent four decades inspiring students in geology and geography, passed away on March 11, 2016, aged 74.

Glenn Robert Sebastian was born on June 18, 1941, and grew up in St. Louis, Missouri. He attended St. Louis University to study geography, graduating with a bachelor’s degree in 1963 and a master’s degree in 1965.

After serving as a park ranger and naturalist on the Blue Ridge Parkway in Virginia, he began his career as an educator. He briefly spent time as an instructor at Indiana State University before moving to the University of South Alabama in 1967. The university, based in Mobile, had only been founded in 1963 and Sebastian was the first geography faculty to be appointed.

He stayed at the University of South Alabama (USA) for the next four decades aside from a time at the University of Northern Colorado for his doctorate in geography. His dissertation, completed in 1977, was entitled “The frequency and selection process of crop combinations in pecan orchards of Mobile and Baldwin Counties, Alabama.”

At USA Sebastian served as Chair of the Department of Geology and Geography (later renamed Department of Earth Sciences when a meteorology program was added to geography and geology) from 1981 until his formal retirement in 2007. He continued to teach students as Professor Emeritus until 2014.

His teaching covered many aspects of physical geography but he was also committed educator, continually seeking to improve teaching and learning, and developing educational resources, as the following diverse examples attest. In the mid-1970s, during his time at the University of Northern Colorado, he worked with Byron Augustin and Don L. Hunter to develop an “Oil Shale Multimedia Kit” for their graduate program, which was endorsed by the National Council for Geographic Education (NCGE) as suitable for schools and colleges.

In the early 1980s Sebastian was involved in a cross-disciplinary project at USA for improving the technical competence of undergraduates in writing, and presented the geography-specific findings at a NCGE conference. The year after, he presented to the NCGE a set of exercises for using the weather maps in a national newspaper to teach intermediate grade students about weather.

In the late 1980s he was involved with reviewing the state syllabus in the “Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education” project, which was seeking to improve the consonance between preservice courses for geography teachers and the middle school geography curriculum. He was also influential in the creation of “The Excitement of Meteorology!,” a National Science Foundation-funded four-week summer program that brought atmospheric sciences to high school students in Mississippi in the 1990s. Meanwhile, in 2004 he presented a paper at The Geological Society of America’s annual meeting describing how a fieldtrip for geology students to a rock outcrop in Alabama is used to teach them skills of scientific reasoning.

Over four decades, Sebastian taught more than 13,000 students – including multiple generations of families – and was a legendary figure in the university’s academic history. He was particularly known for his field trips, most notably through southwestern United States but also overseas.

Closer to home, he used the on-campus nature trail regularly as an outdoor classroom, not just for teaching students but also taking civic and community groups on short field trips through the area. It is located in headwaters of Three Mile Creek, and over three miles of trails wind through 95 acres of native pine/oak woodlands. In 2012 the university named the trail in his honor, in tribute to his love of and enthusiasm for the outdoors.

In 1990 he received the Outstanding Professor Award from university’s National Alumni Association and was also named Outstanding Faculty Member by Alpha Lambda Delta Freshman Honor Society. In 2005-6 he received a Teaching Excellence Award and in 2006-7 an Outstanding Service Award. In 2013 he was selected by a Faculty Senate committee as one of 50 Outstanding Faculty Members in celebration of the university’s fiftieth anniversary.

Outside of academia, Sebastian was a member of Holy Family Catholic Church in Mobile for 44 years, and was also an active member and past president of a local mystic society. He was a member of Tau Kappa Epsilon Fraternity, serving as a faculty advisor to the USA chapter for many years. He was an avid fan of the South Alabama Jaguars, Alabama Crimson Tide and the St. Louis Cardinals. He also loved spending time with his family, especially his grandchildren, as well as working in his yard and caring for his plants, many of which he brought home from his numerous trips to national parks across the country. He traveled extensively with his family and students including trips to Europe, Hawaii, Australia, Mexico, the Caribbean and all over the continental United States.

Sebastian will be fondly remembered by his former students for his inspiration and encouragement as a teacher and mentor. His name will live on at the university, not only in the Glenn Sebastian Nature Trail, but also through the Glenn Sebastian Award, which is presented annually to an junior level geography major who has made significant contributions to geography, and the Dr. Glenn R. Sebastian Endowed Geography Scholarship, which provides financial assistance to deserving students majoring in geography who demonstrate high academic achievement.

Provost and senior vice president for academic affairs, Dr. David Johnson, said, “Glenn Sebastian left an enduring legacy at the University of South Alabama. Through his 40 years of teaching, he touched the lives of thousands of students who loved his enthusiasm and his passion for learning and living. Glenn was among the greatest teachers I have known and he was a dear friend.”

Sebastian is survived by his beloved wife of 48 years, Darlene, their four daughters, Leanne, Amanda, Megan, and Emily, and their families, which include 9 grandchildren.

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