Brooke Hatcher

By Emily Frisan

Since childhood, Brooke Hatcher has been fascinated with climatology. Growing up on a horse farm in the Blue Ridge Mountains shaped her love for earth, nature, and weather. Now as a geospatial/remote sensing lead, she measures changes on Earth and brings visualizations from data to life. From her job as a senior geospatial analyst at New Light Technologies to her volunteer storytelling work with URISA as vice chair of outreach, or her recognition by Geospatial World as a Young Geospatial Professional to Watch in 2024, Hatcher credits her positive experience in the industry to the examples of powerful women in the field, including her first professional mentors at MAXAR Catherine Ipsan and Amanda Monse, who showed her that she, too, can “become a master in this field.”

Hatcher discovered her passion for geospatial information systems in an undergraduate geography course. “Being able to visualize patterns and spatial analysis, like seeing the charts over time of rain gauges, was seeing nature in a new way,” she says.

 

Educational journey in and beyond the classroom

Hatcher received her undergraduate degree in geography from the University of Mary Washington. Like many geographers, she stumbled upon the discipline almost by coincidence. She excelled in history during high school but hesitated to pursue a career in the subject because she was unsure about potential job prospects. She began her undergraduate degree as a biology major but soon realized a career in the lab wasn’t suitable, either.

Hatcher began her professional career creating digital nautical charts for Leidos, which opened the world to features humans can’t see with our eyes, like hydrolines and ocean depth. Following her experience at Leidos, an opportunity opened at MAXAR where Hatcher would go on to create global products for clients, such as the National Geospatial Intelligence Agency. This was the first time she began to gain experience in Landsat and Sentinel 2.

“You’re seeing the ocean in a whole new way,” Hatcher explained. “It was really beautiful to have my first job working on digital nautical charts, then working at MAXAR with land cover and creating remote sensing products with five-meter resolution.”

After gaining a few years of professional experience, Hatcher decided to pursue her master’s degree in geography. After considering her options, she got her degree online at North Carolina State.

As a geospatial engineering consultant, Hatcher continues to learn and keeps up with the latest news and information in the industry. In her professional career, she continues to read peer-reviewed papers and professional blogs and consult tutorials on platforms like YouTube and Udemy.

From Local to Global: How Geography and Opportunities Expands Horizons

Hatcher’s career is focused on developing geospatial solutions and products for disaster response with FEMA and World Bank, working on predictive damage assessments, assessing the potential impact on communities and critical infrastructure, and sharing disaster geospatial data through interagency communication efforts. As a geospatial analyst and a geographer, Hatcher’s jobs involve collaborating with other experts in many other areas, including glaciology, meteorology, paleotempestology (the study of hurricanes), and specialization in biohazards.

The resulting collaborations are mutually beneficial. Geographers “need to know that information… [and] we help work with them to make their vision come to life. We’re translating for them by creating maps,” Hatcher states.

Specifically, FEMA hired Hatcher for remote sensing and image processing, creating products to assist during disasters. Remote sensing techniques can penetrate hurricanes or wildfire smoke to extract information about structures that have been damaged.

“It was so rad,” Hatcher recalls. “It reflects geography in a beautiful way.”

In her latest role at New Light Technologies, Hatcher frequently works with user interfaces (UI) and user experience (UX) to build web applications that help clients understand the community’s profile, such as which areas are going to be most vulnerable, and who are at the most risk of disasters. She explains, “We need to really make sure that the final product is visualized to a specific community, playing into the history and culture, so that it respects the community, and they understand it enough to feel comfortable giving feedback.”

Beyond the Map: Community Impact

Beyond technical skills, important geographic skills include being able to conduct and analyze qualitative and quantitative data. “We don’t always need maps,” she states. “The reason why we need some maps is because we can’t see anything when people are dying, or buildings are being destroyed.”

Therefore, even when making predictive risk products, qualitative skills are important to understand the ability to organize various types of data, understand the importance of scales, whether there are invisible boundaries, which ones take priority, and how this affects the results of the map or product. It’s essential to have a deep understanding of community demographics and vulnerability.

“After doing this for five or six years, I am convinced more than ever, the most effective data is at the community level. We can work globally, but it just strips so much quality and quantity of data. Also, when reporting or responding to a disaster at the community level, there is passion associated with it because that’s your home.”

Being a geographer, Hatcher finds it fascinating to understand why certain geographies are so unique in the world, and how they have shaped rare communities throughout history. “It is important to preserve these unique geographic properties, even outside of my job. I am passionate about creative traveling and exploring these unique places.”

From the Pacific Northwest, Cascades, or the nation’s capital, Hatcher hopes to use her geospatial and web design skills to inspire women to take risks, explore the world, and “make geography hip.” Although her goals are constantly changing, she is dedicated to finding her purpose, and path, and is passionate about capturing the stories, art, culture, problems, and risks of the small and unique communities.

Learn more about what a degree in geography can do for you by reading more AAG Career Profiles and discover the resources we offer for your professional development journey.

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Perspectives

Language Matters: Communications for Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion

Person holding their hands in the shape of a heart with sunlight in background

Caroline Nagel, JEDI Committee Chair

Caroline NagleOver the next several months, we’ll devote space in this column to the perspectives of JEDI Committee chairs as they continue implementing AAG’s Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) plan through the framework of TLC GRAM, which stands for Training, Listening, Communications; and Governance, Reports, Advocacy, and Membership. Caroline Nagel is the chair of the JEDI Committee and also chairs the JEDI Communications subcommittee.

As geographers, we are often reminded that geography means earth-writing. Put another way, we are in the business of words. The identification of communications as a pillar of the JEDI strategic plan acknowledges explicitly that our words are important—that the messages we convey among ourselves as geographers and to the rest of the world matter.

As chair of the AAG Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) Committee, as well as chair of its Communications subcommittee, I am charged with overseeing a process that has ever more importance: enhancing AAG’s capacity to achieve greater diversity, equity, and inclusion within the discipline, whether on college campuses, in private sector work, or in government agencies. Before I discuss some of the committee’s specific activities, I’d like to comment on the context in which we are doing our work.

TLC GRAM logoThe weeks and months following the 2020 murder of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis saw an outpouring of public support for racial justice in the United States. America, it seemed, was ready for a long overdue ‘racial reckoning’.  American corporations, government agencies, and academic institutions hurried to introduce an array of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) measures designed to address institutional barriers to equality.

The backlash against DEI efforts, however, was swift, and, in hindsight, not entirely surprising.  DEI opponents in ‘red’ states moved to cut spending on DEI activities at public universities, while well-financed conservative legal groups successfully challenged the vestiges of ‘race-conscious’ admissions policies.

As chair of the AAG JEDI Committee, I have watched these disheartening developments closely and have pondered what they mean for the AAG’s DEI efforts.  In this fraught moment, my thoughts turn to how words are laden with political meaning. DEI opponents often argue that DEI, and the critical scholarship that underpins it, is a form of ideological indoctrination that limits freedom of thought and expression.  Their response, ironically, has been to restrict or to eliminate narratives around race, gender, and sexuality that they associate with ‘wokeness’ and to replace them with other, more ‘acceptable’ narratives—for instance, that America is a colorblind society.

As the so-called ‘war on woke’ has gained momentum, some organizations wishing to preserve elements of their DEI programs have looked for new, less overt, ways to talk about diversity, equity, and inclusion.   At my university, for instance, the administration preempted pressure from conservative legislators by folding DEI activities into a new Office of Access and Opportunity.  Although this new office does much of the same work that the old DEI office did, I was struck by how our university president, in explaining the name change, emphasized outreach to first-generation students and to veterans and, in so doing, seemed to downplay the focus on students of color. This is not to discount the validity of any such outreach, but, rather, to indicate how certain signifiers of difference—especially of race—are viewed with suspicion despite evidence of their continued relevance in South Carolina and beyond.

While tactics to “rebrand” DEI may be prudent, we should be wary of backing off from the language associated with DEI.  Justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion are not the buzzwords of some woke agenda; rather, they are terms that speak incisively to empirical realities.  Take, for instance, the concept of ‘justice’, which has been part of the vocabulary of geographers for many decades.  In some corners of the social media universe, the term ‘justice’ has taken on almost pejorative connotations—hence, the widely mocked figure of the ‘social justice warrior’. But how else are we to talk about the dumping of toxic waste in poor communities, the lack of public investment in affordable housing, the devastation of communities and environments caused by the extraction of resources, or the dire impacts of climate change on countries that have contributed almost nothing to global warming?  If these aren’t matters of social justice, what are they?

This is not to say that concepts like justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion should not be held up to critical scrutiny. Geographers, for instance, have rightly been critical of diversity discourses in universities and other institutions, which often avoid substantive responses to systemic exclusions.  But critiquing these concepts and demanding more of them is different from discrediting them altogether.

I would venture that for most geographers, it is an obvious statement of fact that the world is replete with social inequalities that are reproduced through political structures, institutional policies, and everyday behaviors.  The aim of the AAG JEDI committee is to ensure that geography as a discipline can produce knowledge that captures these complexities; to do this, we need to acknowledge and to elevate perspectives and experiences that have typically been ignored; and we need to ensure that many different voices are shaping conversations within all disciplinary subfields.

Within the JEDI Communications Committee, we have focused on a heightened presence for JEDI activities on AAG’s social media and other platforms, as well as the work underway to help reorganize the AAG website and JEDI page so that they serve as a hub for JEDI-related resources and tools. This will involve collating resources from past DEI initiatives and making these resources more readily available for AAG members.  It will also involve creating profiles of departments that have successfully recruited diverse groups of undergraduate and postgraduate students; posting curricular resources that emphasize critical geographical thought; providing curated lists of sources that explain community engagement; and short videos of AAG members who are making a difference in their institutions and communities.  We also plan to post information about upcoming JEDI-related events (including AAG sponsored workshops and forums), and to highlight JEDI-focused conference sessions.

As we work toward the implementation of the JEDI strategic plan, we invite AAG members to get involved and to keep the principles of justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion at the center of our mission as geographers.

The AAG Culture of Care column is an outreach initiative by the AAG JEDI Committee. Don’t forget to sign up for JEDI Office Hours. The current theme of Office Hours is An Ethos of Care in the Research Enterprise.

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AAG Staff
AAG Staff
President's Column

Building Vibrant Departmental Cultures, Part Three: Developing more transparent and horizontal governance

Stylized tile wall with "possible" spelled out; credit: Chang Ye, Unsplash
Credit: Chang Ye, Unsplash

Photo of Rebecca Lave

My previous columns in this series described how we transformed Indiana University Geography from a space of personal and intellectual conflict into a vibrant and collegial department. As described in Part One of this series, a key component of our success was abandoning the traditional physical/human-environment/human geography division and replacing it with a problem-focused interdisciplinary departmental structure. A second key component was creating a culture of care and respect for students, staff, and faculty. In this column, I focus on developing more horizontal and transparent governance practices and policies.

Inclusive, horizontal governance

One of the most important factors for us in building cohesion has been buy-in: people need to feel that they have a real, substantive stake in departmental decisions. The trick is how to balance this with respecting the time of Assistant Professors and non-tenure-track (NNT) faculty, whose job security depends on not sinking too much time into service.

Our approach has been to create small (usually 3-4 member) ad hoc committees to investigate and make recommendations on any important policy decision. The chair of the ad hoc committee is a tenured faculty member charged with most of the labor: scheduling meetings, writing agendas, drafting memos to update the rest of the faculty, etc. Thus, the ask for the other committee members is only the substantive parts of the policy-making process: considering potential solutions, deciding how to explain them clearly and succinctly to the rest of the faculty, and recommending a path forward.

Each committee’s recommendations are discussed in faculty meetings. Often it takes two or three rounds of discussion to consider the strengths and weaknesses of an ad hoc committee’s proposal before we are ready to vote. Because of this careful process, and because we include an explicit proviso that we can revisit any decision if it does not achieve what we hoped it would, most of these votes are unanimous.

This approach creates a relatively horizontal governance structure by enabling a lot of substantive input with relatively small investments of time from our structurally vulnerable colleagues. We have used it to gradually change many aspects of our program, from giving NTT faculty all voting rights the university allows them (including voting on TT hires), to allowing public and engaged scholarship to count as up to 25% of promotion and tenure cases, to changing the pedagogy and methods requirements for our graduate program.

Transparent expectations

I started my term as department chair in 2019 intending to focus on our undergraduate program, but meetings with graduate students made it clear that the department had some serious discrepancies in mentoring that needed to be addressed immediately. We created an ad hoc committee focused on mentorship, this time with graduate student members as well. The ad hoc committee’s goal was to clarify our collective expectations for the responsibilities advisors and advisees had to each other and the rest of the departmental community. We felt that this transparency was particularly important for first generation and international students, who often had no idea how advisors were supposed to behave, what advisors could and could not ask of them, or where their funding came from.

In the end, we made three big changes to our graduate program. The most important was a unanimously adopted list of expectations for advisors and advisees that spelled out agreed-upon practices for everything from professionalization and pedagogy training to timelines for replying to emails. This included sections on what advisors should never ask students to do, and on the department’s responsibility to admitted students. The documents we produced went through many more rounds of review than was typical because they touched on almost aspect of department of life.

Guidance for Advisor/Advisee Interactions

The Department of Geography views graduate education as one of its key missions and would like our community to be clear on the central aspects of the advisor/advisee relationship. Graduate education is a form of apprenticeship, but there are basic responsibilities on both sides. Professors expect professional behavior from students and students should receive the same from faculty advisors. Finally, it is important to note that it is the Department, not the advisor, that admits graduate students, and thus the Department also has responsibilities to graduate students as spelled out below. 

Students should:

  • Communicate constructively and respectfully with all members of the department, including office staff.
  • Behave professionally in all academic settings.
  • Work with their advisor to schedule arrival times for drafts of presentations, articles, etc. to enable advisors to provide timely feedback.
  • Meet deadlines agreed to with their advisors.
  • Respond to communications from their advisor during the academic year within three working days for research-related questions, and one working day for AI-related duties unless otherwise indicated in the email, and absent extenuating circumstances (e.g. a health crisis).
  • Nudge their advisor if they do not respond in a timely fashion as defined below.
  • Keep all appointments unless other arrangements have been made.
  • Engage, reflect, and act on their advisor’s feedback and advice.
  • Get in touch with their advisor immediately if they run into serious intellectual or professional issues, or personal issues that affect their research or other academic duties.
  • Help to build the intellectual community in the department through participation in courses, attendance at departmental colloquia, attendance and participation with GGSO, and interactions with other faculty and graduate students.
  • Be aware of what constitutes plagiarism and avoid it.
  • Contribute actively to their own intellectual development, and work to expand their intellectual resources and community.
  • Be proactive about forming an advisory committee, and also about changing the composition of that committee if needed.
  • Meet with their advisory committee annually to discuss their progress towards degree.
  • Fill out an evaluation of their advisor each year using the departmental checklist, and submit it to the Director of Graduate Studies. 

Advisors should:

  • Interact constructively and respectfully.
  • Meet at least bi-weekly during the academic year with students who are in residence, if not on medical, parental or sabbatical leave, and absent extenuating circumstances (e.g. health crisis).
  • Respond to student communications during the academic year within three working days for research-related questions, and one working day for AI-related duties unless otherwise indicated in the email; if not on medical, parental or sabbatical leave; and absent extenuating circumstances (e.g. a health crisis).
  • Respond gracefully and respectfully to reminders from students.
  • Help students understand the substance and methods of their field by providing intellectual guidance and training.
  • Discuss and provide guidance on research ethics.
  • Encourage safety in the field.
  • Encourage a healthy work/life balance.
  • Help students understand the expectations for professional behavior in their field (e.g. how to behave in the classroom, at conferences, etc.).
  • Work with students on the basics of academic professionalization, including:
    • How to prepare an academic CV;
    • How to write a conference abstract;
    • How to give the most common forms of academic presentations (e.g. 15 and 45-minute talks);
    • How to write a grant application (if relevant); and
    • How to apply for academic jobs.
  • Encourage and help students to publish by:
    • Discussing journal selection;
    • Reviewing draft manuscripts; and
    • Teaching students efficient and constructive ways to respond to peer reviews.
  • Provide useful and timely feedback on student work during the academic year, if not on medical, parental or sabbatical leave and absent extenuating circumstances (e.g. a health crisis) as follows:
    • On presentations, within three working days;
    • On article and thesis drafts, within 1-2 weeks; and
    • On dissertations, within one month.
    • Feedback should be constructive and respectfully-phrased
  • Determine the standards for presentations, theses, dissertations, journal articles, and reports.
  • Give students credit for contributions to papers, presentations, or other products.
  • Work with students on non-course specific teaching skills, including:
    • How to prepare a syllabus;
    • How to facilitate class discussions;
    • Fair and appropriate grading; and
    • How to deal with teaching-related problems (e.g., difficult students, misconduct, etc.).
  • Help students connect to other scholars in their field.
  • Discuss alternatives to academic careers and direct the student to relevant resources, such as the Walter Center.
  • Meet with their advisee’s full committee annually to discuss progress towards degree.
  • Fill out an evaluation of their advisee each year using the department checklist and submit it to the Director of Graduate Studies.

Advisors should never:

  • Expect student assistance in non-academic realms (e.g. running personal errands).
  • Belittle or demean a student in person or other media.
  • Deny students access to data they helped collect.
  • Express romantic or sexual interest in a student or commit any form of gender or sexual harassment.
  • Use a student’s work without attribution.
  • Ask an AI/RA to work more than 20 hours/week.
  • Ask a student to write papers or presentations for
  • Ask a student to write their own recommendation letter.

The Department should: [1]

  • Provide students with up-to-date information that includes policies, practices, degree requirements, and resources.
  • Assist students with selection of their advisors as needed.
  • Communicate clearly and comprehensively about funding packages in admissions letters.
  • In cases where conflicts arise between advisors and advisees, the DGS (or the Chair, if the DGS is the advisor) will:
    • Meet with the advisor and advisee to resolve those conflicts;
    • Follow up within 8 weeks to see if the conflict has been addressed;
    • If not, the DGS or Chair will:
      • Assist the student in finding another advisor in the department;
      • Assist the student in finding another advisor at IU;
      • Assist the student in selecting appropriate programs at other universities.
  • Provide pedagogical training and regular assessment of their teaching and other assistantship activities.
  • Review graduate student progress toward their degrees and professional development, including mentoring meetings, committee meetings, exam completions, and other benchmarks appropriate to their discipline.
  • Provide appropriate infrastructure to allow students to complete their education and research in a timely and productive manner, such as office space, computers, laboratory facilities, and equipment.
  • Provide opportunities for professional development that will be relevant to students seeking careers outside academia and/or their research discipline.
  • Establish and communicate policies for emergencies and unplanned situations that may disrupt the work of students and/or faculty.
  • Incorporate these guidelines and recommendations into their departmental policies or handbooks and actively promote their observance.

[1] Modified from Penn State’s Guidelines for Advisor-Graduate Student Interactions

 

With transparent expectations in place, we turned to accountability: trying to identify when we were not living up to expectations so that we could fix issues before they turned into crises. We converted that list of expectations into check-box forms to be completed each year by advisees and advisors and sent to the Director of Graduate Studies (not each other). We also adopted a practice of requiring graduate students to convene their research committee annually to check in on their progress towards degree and discuss any questions or concerns the student might have. As with the checklists, the goal of the annual committee meetings is to catch issues while they are still fixable, but by allowing other faculty members to observe the advisor/advisee relationship directly rather than relying on self-reporting.

Advisor’s Checklist

Advisor: _______________________________                                                   Date: ____________

Advisee: _______________________________

To my knowledge, this student is:

___ Communicating constructively and respectfully with all members of the department, including office staff.

___ Behaving professionally in all academic settings.

___ Working with me to schedule arrival times for drafts of presentations, articles, etc. to enable me to provide timely feedback.

___ Meeting the deadlines we have agreed to.

___ Responding to communications from me during the academic year within three working days for research-related questions, and one working day for AI-related duties unless otherwise indicated in the email, and absent extenuating circumstances (e.g. a health crisis).

___ Nudging me if I do not respond in a timely fashion.

___ Keeping all appointments unless other arrangements have been made.

___ Engaging, reflecting, and acting on my feedback and advice.

___ Getting in touch with me immediately if they run into serious intellectual or professional issues, or personal issues that affect their research or other academic duties.

___ Helping to build the intellectual community in the department through participation in courses, attendance at departmental colloquia, attendance and participation with GGSO, and interactions with other faculty and graduate students.

___ Aware of what constitutes plagiarism and how to avoid it.

___ Contributing actively to their own intellectual development, and working to expand their intellectual resources and community.

___ Taking their pedagogical responsibilities for the department seriously, and practicing leading part or all of a class session from their third semester until they serve as lead instructor or graduate.

___ Being proactive about forming an advisory committee, and also about changing the composition of that committee if needed.

___ Meeting with their advisory committee annually to discuss their progress towards degree. 

Please explain any areas of concern:

 

Advisee’s Checklist

Advisor: _______________________________                                                   Date: ____________

Advisee: _______________________________

My advisor is:

___ Interacting with me constructively and respectfully.

___ Meeting with me at least bi-weekly during the academic year.

___ Responding to emails from me during the academic year within three working days for research-related questions, and one working day for AI-related duties unless otherwise indicated in the email.

___ Responding gracefully and respectfully to reminders from students.

___ Helping me understand the substance and methods of my field by providing intellectual guidance and training.

___ Discussing and providing guidance on research ethics.

___ Encouraging safety in the field.

___ Encouraging a healthy work/life balance.

___ Helping me understand the expectations for professional behavior in my field (e.g. how to behave in the classroom, at conferences, etc.).

___ Working with me on the basics of academic professionalization, including:

  • How to prepare an academic CV;
  • How to write a conference abstract;
  • How to give the most common forms of academic presentations (e.g. 15 and 45-minute talks);
  • How to write a grant application (if relevant); and
  • How to apply for academic jobs.

___ Encouraging and helping me to publish by:

  • Discussing journal selection;
  • Reviewing draft manuscripts; and
  • Teaching me efficient and constructive ways to respond to peer reviews.

___ Providing useful and timely feedback on my work during the academic year as follows:

  • On presentations, within three working days;
  • On article and thesis drafts, within 1-2 weeks; and
  • On dissertations, within one month.

___ Giving me clear direction about their standards for presentations, theses, dissertations, journal articles, and reports.

___ Giving me credit for contributions to papers, presentations, or other products (see departmental co-authorship guidelines)

___ Working with me on non-course specific teaching skills, including:

  • How to prepare a syllabus;
  • How to facilitate class discussions;
  • Fair and appropriate grading; and
  • How to deal with teaching-related problems (e.g., difficult students, misconduct, etc.).

___ Helping me connect to other scholars in my field.

___ Discussing alternatives to academic careers and helping me connect to relevant resources, such as the Walter Center.

___ Meeting with my full committee annually to discuss progress towards degree.

 

My advisor is not:

___ Expecting me to assist them in non-academic realms (e.g. running personal errands).

___ Belittling or demeaning me in person or other media.

___ Obstructing my access to data I helped collect.

___ Expressing romantic or sexual interest in me or committing any form of gender or sexual harassment.

___ Using my work without attribution.

___ Asking me to work more than 20 hours/week on average for my AI/RA position.

___ Asking me to write papers or presentations for them.

___ Asking me to write my own recommendation letter.

Please explain any areas of concern:

 

Better is Possible

In this series, I have highlighted a few things that I believe have been particularly important in our departmental journey, but there is no blueprint for building a vibrant department. My colleagues here at IU might emphasize different aspects of our collective work, and there are many other excellent approaches to building horizontal and inclusive governance that we have never tried. What I can say with confidence is that we are in a staggeringly better place than I ever imagined in my initial years at IU, working with my head down and my door shut. In dream hampton’s words: “Better is Possible”

This is the third of three parts of a series on culture change at University of Indiana Geography.

Read Part 1          Read Part 2

Please note: The ideas expressed in the AAG President’s column are not necessarily the views of the AAG as a whole. This column is traditionally a space in which the president may talk about their views or focus during their tenure as president of AAG, or spotlight their areas of professional work. Please feel free to email the president directly at rlave [at] indiana [at] edu to enable a constructive discussion.

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Rebecca Lave
Rebecca Lave
Perspectives

Departments in Peril: How Can the Healthy Departments Committee Help?

Apples lined up on a flat surface; Credit: Isabella Fischer, Unsplash

Photo of David KaplanIn many respects this should be a time of rising attention and support for geography. The concerns of the planet — global climate change, geopolitical turmoil, social and spatial justice — are those that speak to geography’s strengths. Geography scholars have been recognized with Guggenheims, MacArthurs, National Academy invitations and other honors. Geospatial technologies are standard throughout business and government, and geographers are best poised to educate geospatial practitioners and develop new technologies. We are also a STEM discipline, which puts us at a strategic advantage given the priorities of many universities these days.

Yet, while the promise of geography is great and the demand for geography is clear, our overall institutional health is in jeopardy. Consider these two markers. First, as the State of Geography report pointed out, and as I warned in my first presidential column, there has been a steady drop in the number of geography majors throughout the United States in the last dozen years. Lower major numbers reduce overall credit hours in geography programs. Second, several geography programs in the last several years have been eliminated or severely impaired. This has happened at both smaller, teaching-oriented universities and in larger research-oriented flagships. The number of programs in peril is higher than I have seen in my professional experience and constitutes a critical problem for our field.

Those of you reading this column are aware of some of the reasons behind these trends. Most colleges and universities across the country are looking at enrollment declines and entire institutions have been forced to close. Funding support is under threat In the face of stingy state budgets and some legislators casting universities as the enemy rather than emphasizing the benefits they offer to society. Moreover, as an academic discipline within the United States, geography carries its own unique disadvantages. We cannot always count on university administrators being familiar with what we do (how many times have we been called “Geology”?). As a discovery major that most students find only after having taken a class or two, we rely on core-curriculum requirements to bring in our students.

To counter these trends, we cannot afford to rest on our impressive laurels. As I see it, if nothing is done to turn things around, we could be looking at geography becoming a niche discipline at just a few, mostly larger, universities. Several states will have no geography programs within their borders. And as access to geography programs diminishes, ever fewer people will know of its value, leading to a vicious cycle of continued decline.

Unfortunately, there are no straightforward solutions to these challenges. In past years, overall increases in the number of college and university students provided all disciplines with a boost. Merely holding our own was enough to ensure success. The high-water mark was in 2010, when there were 21 million U.S. university students. Since then, the numbers have declined by ten percent; declines that will probably accelerate with falling birth rates. When overall higher education numbers decrease, budgets are stressed, and disciplinary success requires fighting against these larger trends. In a shrinking pool of students, Geography needs to prove its value over and again.

In keeping with this need, many useful ideas have been discussed in journals and in the pages of the AAG Newsletter. A couple of years ago, Stoler and others measured the effectiveness of various terms associated with the names of courses and departments. Several academics have noted the value and promise of the AP Human Geography exam, including Moseley et al and Solem et al, and AAG presidents have weighed in on some ideas to improve departmental health, including building an environment of respect (Lave), enhancing mentorship (Alderman), building community in geography (Foote), and creating a more equitable academic culture (Kaplan).

Fortunately, the American Association of Geographers has long understood the challenges departments face and has endeavored to help. The Healthy Departments Committee (HDC) was established in 2004 as an AAG standing committee composed of well-established professors and administrators from a variety of institutions. The HDC was intended originally to act on any requests from departments or programs threatened with closure. It was also meant as a resource for departments looking for external reviewers or any other form of assistance. Under the able direction of first Vicki Lawson and then Alec Murphy, the HDC has written dozens of supportive letters to university decision-makers. The HDC also initiated workshops for department heads, developed a set of materials for departments to utilize in their own promotion, and facilitated the launch of a department heads’ listserv.

These activities continue to this day, but we need to find ways for the HDC to become more proactive in anticipating the threats that departments face. It is always frustrating to discover that a program is slated for closure in a matter of just days or a few weeks, with no time to turn things around. In some unfortunate instances, closures have been announced out of the blue, but more often there have been warning signs, often in the face of low enrollments and a smaller major pool. As unfair as it might be, administrators will seize on these metrics to justify their actions. A program with large numbers of students and with a dedicated base of alumni, is much, much harder to cut.

The HDC can only be effective if geographers know who we are and what we can do. We are available to brainstorm ways to enhance the resilience of your programs, including course changes, curricular design, expanding outreach to potential students, and working more effectively with administrators. Sometimes a few tweaks early on can make a difference. Certainly, it makes sense for all programs to think carefully about their strengths and weaknesses and consider how these align with institutional guidelines.

In order to get a more granular look at geography programs in the United States, the HDC has been working with the AAG to expand its data collection on matters of relevance to departmental health. Look for a survey to be distributed to all program heads in April which will provide measures of departmental health. Strong participation will greatly improve the ability of the HDC to respond to departments facing significant challenges. We will identify those activities that the AAG can perform on behalf of departments, such as creating more relevant promotional materials and providing help for at-risk departments.

In the lead-up to the release of the AAG Survey and the Annual Meeting in Honolulu, we will be providing more information on the state of Geography and what the Healthy Departments Committee can do. Moving forward, we urge those of you who work in colleges and universities to reflect on your own programs and possible ways to build a more robust, healthier department.

I would be delighted to speak with you further about this. Please reach out at [email protected].

 

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Collective Concerns Geography Essentials Governance and Policy
David Kaplan
David Kaplan

Aloha: A Reciprocal Relationship among People, the Environment, and the Spiritual World

Perspectives

Research Partnerships: The Foundation for a Culture of Care 

Person holding their hands in the shape of a heart with sunlight in background

By Risha RaQuelle

Photo of Risha Berry

Last month, I shared the news that AAG is embarking on a a collaborative project with the University of Colorado Colorado Springs (UCCS) to create pathways to an ethos of care within the discipline of geography and scientific disciplines. This project, funded by the National Science Foundation, exemplifies the kind of work that AAG wants to encourage and support in the geography discipline.

We can’t do it without partners.

In 2024 and beyond, AAG is seeking interested collaborators, especially at emerging research institutions, to help us examine, enhance, and reform research practices, teaching, outreach across sectors, career development, mentoring—in essence, anything that will advance the discipline with a culture of care in mind.

AAG has a vision: We want to be a national fulcrum for grant and research opportunities for the discipline’s transformation, and we want to provide technical support to partner institutions and organizations seeking to share their knowledge and level up their prominence in research. The common throughline of the projects we encourage is commitment to the central principles of belonging, access, justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion (BAJEDI).

We are especially interested in lending our technical expertise to institutions that are not considered R1 and may otherwise, without a partner, be less competitive for research opportunities.

To learn more about the ethos of care framework, read this perspective from Inside Higher Ed, by Emily Skop, Martina Angela Caretta, Caroline Faria and Jessi L. Smith, offering a call to the discipline.

In the coming months, I’d like to focus the JEDI Office Hours on connecting with interested AAG members who might want to create a collaboration. Are you interested in exploring this opportunity? Please take a moment to sign up for a time to chat about partnerships and ideas to create a culture of care in the research enterprise.

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0144

The AAG Culture of Care column is an outreach initiative by the AAG JEDI Committee. Don’t forget to sign up for JEDI Office Hours. The theme in November is An Ethos of Care in the Research Enterprise.

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Collective Concerns Geography Essentials Networks and Connections
AAG Staff
AAG Staff
President's Column

Building Vibrant Departmental Cultures, Part Two: Creating a culture of respect and care for students, staff and faculty

A group of students explores geography with using their sense of smell over drinking glasses filled with liquid.
A group of students explores geography with their senses. UI Geography now prides itself on its environment of trust, respect, and creative inquiry.

Photo of Rebecca Lave

My previous column began the story of Indiana University Geography’s near-death experience in the 2010s and our decade of collective work to transform the department. Walking away from the traditional physical/human-environment/human geography division was a key aspect of that transformation, but creating a culture of care and respect and developing more transparent, horizontal governance were key components as well. In this column, I focus on how we created a more respectful and supportive departmental culture; I will address governance in the third column in this series.

Building respectful and supportive practices

I don’t know when the culture at IU Geography broke down; by the time I arrived to interview in spring 2008, the level of intellectual and personal disrespect within the department was intense enough that I nearly refused the job. In the end, I accepted, thinking that if I could keep my head down and my office door shut the cultural issues would not affect me. But as anyone who has been in a toxic department knows, bad behavior has surprisingly pervasive effects.

Our departmental meltdown in Fall 2011 had many long-term causes, but the immediate catalyst was two physical scientists declaring during a meet-and-greet with our new Dean that their situation was untenable because of teaching load and the presence of social scientists, and that they had independently begun negotiations to merge our department into the Geology Department. The rest of us were shocked and horrified. Our new Dean was unimpressed by our collective dysfunction, to put it mildly.

The year that followed was deeply stressful and upsetting. We were nearly forced to merge into two other units and multiple faculty moved to other departments or left IU. In the end, when the Dean decided to support our continued existence and gave us hires to rebuild, one of our highest priorities was building a more supportive and respectful culture. That took many different forms, but I’ll highlight three here.

The first was a commitment to respectful speech. We asserted, and then reinforced, the importance of treating everyone in the department (students, staff, faculty, colloquium speakers, etc.) respectfully in person and in email. This included an explicit acknowledgement that people in the department employed very different models of scholarship, and that all were worthy of respect.

Secondly, we changed department practices to better support each other’s lives outside of work. The point was not to recast the department as family, but to acknowledge that we are all human: some of us have care responsibilities; others have chronic illnesses or other vulnerabilities. We acknowledged and tried to support that in multiple ways, such as stepping in to cover classes when someone had surgery and moving the timeslot for our colloquium earlier to accommodate childcare pick-up times.

Perhaps the most important of these changes has been our collective commitment to only hire people who treat others well (the “no a**holes” rule).  This rule has been challenged occasionally when one or more of us was starry-eyed about an exceptionally strong CV; so far, though, we have held the line. Those of us who survived the meltdown at IU, or who came in from other departments with toxic cultures, are all too aware of the value of collegiality.

Meal trains as a metric

There are many metrics for assessing attempts to build more supportive and respectful department cultures; mine is meal trains.

Meal trains are a form of mutual aid in which people cook and bring meals to someone who needs support. When my daughter was born at a difficult time for my family, our community in Berkeley brought us dinner every other night for six weeks, getting us through the worst of the transition. Meal trains are powerful symbolically, drawing the recipient into a network of care. They are also powerful practices: there is nothing like preparing a meal with your own hands to ground you in care for another.

When I arrived at IU, there was no tradition of meal trains; frankly, there was only a 50% chance that another faculty member would say hello if you ran into them in the hall. I made a few solo attempts to get the tradition started, but it wasn’t until my colleague Justin Maxwell’s second child was born that we had our first departmental meal train. At first, we organized them only for faculty; then we expanded them to staff. I opened a bottle of bubbly when we voted to extend meal trains to graduate students. The hierarchies in academia are no joke, but it is possible to extend care, respect and appreciation within them.

The topics I’ve called out here are part of a broader set of endemic inequities within geography, both inside and outside the academy, that stem from a range of factors including unequal job security; race, ethnicity, gender, class, and ability; differences in institutional status, including research v. teaching institutions, but also Global South v. Global North; and the increasing dominance of English as the language of academic and professional life. These inequities play out in different ways. Some, like pay, job security, and career support, are obvious. Others, such as the expectations around who will do take on the work of mentoring and advising, and who is allowed to make ground-breaking scholarly contributions v. who is expected to demonstrate the relevance of others’ theories, are less obvious. As you think about how to make your own department a more respectful and supportive place to work, I strongly encourage you to check out AAG’s initiative with the University of Colorado Colorado Springs to identify and strengthen cultures of care within the geographic research community.

This is the second of three parts of a series on culture change at University of Indiana Geography.

Read Part 1

Please note: The ideas expressed in the AAG President’s column are not necessarily the views of the AAG as a whole. This column is traditionally a space in which the president may talk about their views or focus during their tenure as president of AAG, or spotlight their areas of professional work. Please feel free to email the president directly at rlave [at] indiana [at] edu to enable a constructive discussion.

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Collective Concerns Geography Essentials Networks and Connections
Rebecca Lave
Rebecca Lave