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East Lakes Division Team Takes 2014 World Geography Bowl

AAG East Lakes Regional Division 2014 World Geography Bowl Champions

The East Lakes Team won first place in the 2014 World Geography Bowl, an annual quiz competition for teams of college-level geography students representing the AAG’s regional divisions. The event was its 21st year for hosting during its Annual Meeting.

On April 11, seven teams, each representing an AAG regional division, competed at the convention center in Tampa. Of the nine regional divisions, the following seven was represented by a team: East Lakes, Great-Plains Rocky Mountains, Middle Atlantic, Middle States, New England-St. Lawrence Valley, Pacific Coast, and Southeast Divisions, A spoiler team was added, comprised of students present at the competition.

At the conclusion of the exciting competition, AAG President Julie Winkler, wrapped up the event with an uplifting message and presented the winners with prizes. Bob Dulli (representing National Geographic Society) partnered with Julie Winkler to give out the Atlas prize to second runner-up winners.

The winning East Lakes Division team’s roster was:

  • Steven Schultze (Team captain), Michigan State University
  • Alex Colucci, Kent University
  • Lisa Dershowitz, Miami (Ohio) University
  • David Eichenauer, University of Toledo
  • Michael Chohany, University of Toledo
  • Evgeny Panchenko, University of Toledo
  • Lisa DeChano-Cook (team sponsor/coach), Western Michigan University

The East Lakes team consisted of the top six scoring individuals from an on-line quiz that the region uses to determine the team each year. The team was coordinated by Dr. Lisa M. DeChano-Cook from Western Michigan University.

The first runner-up Middle Atlantic Division team’s roster was:

  • Raynell Cooper (Team captain), George Washington University
  • Owen Dowell, Salisbury University
  • Sam Hudis, George Washington University
  • Sara Hughes, Frostburg State University
  • Walker Skeeter, Salisbury University
  • Will Steckman, Frostburg State University
  • Tracy Edwards (team sponsor/coach), Frostburg State University

The second runner-up Pacific Coast Division team’s roster was:

  • Brendan Gordon (Team captain), University of Idaho
  • Crystal English, San Diego State University / University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Biniam Mengisteab, San Francisco State University
  • Daniel Phillips, University of California, Santa Barbara
  • Tina White (team sponsor/coach), Pasadena City College

The top five individuals with best personal scores were awarded an MVP prizes. Listed in order of most points earned:

  • Raynell Cooper, George Washington University
  • Brendan Gordon, University of Idaho
  • Pete Akers, University of Georgia
  • Kevin Bean, Bridgewater State University
  • Evgeny Panchenko, University of Toledo

Thanks to 2014 WGB prize donors and volunteers

 

Organizers of the World Geography Bowl would like to express thanks to the countless volunteer question writers, team sponsors/coaches, moderators, judges, and scorekeepers who make the competition possible, and to the many students who competed throughout the country. We would like to recognize the volunteers this year as: Andrew Allen (University of Kansas), Casey Allen (University of Colorado Denver), Don Colley (San Diego State University), Jamison Conley (West Virginia University), Richard Deal (Edinboro University), Suzanne Dickens (Front Range Community College), Dawn Drake (Missouri Western University), Robert Edsall (Idaho State University), Emily Fekete (University of Kansas), Peggy Gripshover (Western Kentucky University), Melvin Arthur Johnson (University of Wisconsin – Manitowoc), Patrick May (Plymouth State University), Lee Nolan (Pennsylvania State University), Wesley Reisser (George Washington University and U.S. Department of State), Zia Salim (San Diego State University/University of California, Santa Barbara), Michael Webb (University of North Carolina).

World Geography Bowl organizers thank its supporters who generously donated atlases, books, gift certificates, softwares, and MVP awards – Avenza Systems, Cambridge University Press, East View Press, Esri, Guilford Publications, Lonely Planet, McGraw-Hill Higher Education, National Geographic Society, The University of Chicago Press, and The University of Georgia Press – who recognize the important role the competition plays in building a sense of community and generating excitement around geographic learning. Your continued support is truly appreciated.

And, a heart-felt thank you was expressed to Andrew Shears, assistant professor of geography at Mansfield University, for his three-year term leading the tournament. This was his final year as World Geography Bowl executive director. Jamison Conley (West Virginia University) succeeds Andy Shears as the new executive director.

2015 World Geography Bowl – Chicago

 

The 2015 World Geography Bowl competition will be held in Chicago in April, 2015. Regional competitions typically occur during the fall at respective AAG regional meetings, where regional teams for the national competition are usually formed. For more information on organizing a team, contact the World Geography Bowl executive director, Jamison Conley, at West Virginia University at [email protected] or Niem Huynh at [email protected] .

Note: This post has been edited to reflect the correct yearly anniversary. In a previous version it erroneously stated that this event hit the 25th year milestone.

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Catherine Ball Carlston

Catherine Ball Carlston Catherine Ball Carlston celebrated her 99th birthday on January 25, 2014; she died peacefully on April 24, 2014, in Springfield, Virginia, after a short illness.  The daughter of Hilda Fischer Ball and Emery F. Ball, of Parkersburg, West Virginia, Catherine Ball Carlston was educated in the Parkersburg public school system, and, in 1936, earned a B.A. degree in geography and mathematics at Denison University, Ohio. At Denison, she became a member of Alpha Phi sorority and was elected to the honorary academic society Phi Beta Kappa.

Following graduation, she returned to her hometown to teach mathematics and physical geography at Parkersburg High School. From 1936 to 1938, she attended Columbia University with a Graduate Resident Scholarship from the Committee for Advanced Instruction in Science to study physiography with emphasis in geomorphology. From 1938 to 1940 she taught physiography in the Wood County public school system in Parkersburg.

She met fellow graduate student Charles W. Carlston at Columbia University. They married in the summer of 1940.

In 1940, Mr. Carlston was appointed to the Water Resources Division of the U.S. Geological Survey, at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He examined whether Alabama’s ground water resources met requirements for military and industrial purposes. The couple spent the war years in Alabama; during that time Mrs. Carlston taught physiography in the Army Specialized Training Program at the University of Alabama.

In 1945, Mr. Carlston accepted an appointment at St. Lawrence University in Canton, NY, where their daughter, Sarah Elizabeth, was born. In 1946, he was awarded a Ph.D. in geology, and, in 1947, he accepted a faculty position in the Department of Geology at Oberlin College, Ohio. In 1951, Charles was recruited by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization, to study and report on the potential of Pakistani ground water resources. The family primarily lived in Lahore and Quetta, Pakistan. Upon returning to Oberlin, Mrs. Carlston wrote a treatise on the status of women in Pakistan and India, which she presented to the Oberlin branch of the American Association of University Women.

Returning to the Geological Survey in 1953, Mr. Carlston moved his family to Morgantown, West Virginia. In 1957, he transferred to the Survey offices in Arlington, Virginia.  Mr. Carlston died in 1985.

During their years at Oberlin, Mrs. Carlston was a member of the Oberlin branch of the American Association of University Women and served as president of the chapter from 1945 to 1946. In Morgantown, she led a successful campaign to move the city’s library out of its basement home in the city building and into a proper purpose-built home with a dedicated Children’s Room. As part of that campaign Mrs. Carlston organized a month-long festival of recreational reading for children and hosted a local radio program focusing on reading to children. The Carlstons joined with six other families to form the city’s Unitarian Fellowship, which continues to flourish today. During their association with the Fellowship, Mrs. Carlston recruited teachers, installed the Council of Liberal Churches curriculum, and oversaw the church school. In 1955, she participated in a summer religious education week at Star Island, Isles of Shoals, New Hampshire.

In Arlington, Virginia, Mrs. Carlston  worked part-time in the Arlington County Libraries. In the early 1960s, she joined the staff of the Geography and Map Division of the U.S. Library of Congress as a cataloger of atlases. Her next fulltime employment was at the National Academy of Sciences, where she worked for three years as an editor of the Proceedings of the Academy, and for two years with the National Cooperative Highway Research Program, a division of the Highway Research Board.  From 1972 until her retirement in 1985, she edited several editions of the Handbook of Physiology for the American Physiological Society in Bethesda, Maryland. She also co-edited the Physicians Guide to Diving Medicine, published by Plenum in 1984, for the Undersea Medical Society, now the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society.

Mrs. Carlston enjoyed retirement by traveling and taking travel-oriented Smithsonian Courses, with an emphasis in English architecture. Her travels including several Queen Elizabeth II crossings to and from England, two trips to Australia and New Zealand, and two Concorde flights. She attended two one-week programs with her daughter and son-in-law at Christ Church College in Oxford, England, for course work in cathedrals and the Great Houses of Britain. She traveled eight times on the legendary Delta Queen steam ship on the Mississippi and its tributaries.

Mrs. Carlston was active in organizing and teaching in the Lifelong Learning Institute for Seniors in Northern Virginia.

She moved to Greenspring Village in Springfield, Virginia in 1999, where she renewed her membership in the Daughters of the American Revolution, and joined the Early American Glass Society. She founded the Greenspring Play Reading Group, which continues to function today. She also served on the Greenspring Archive Committee.

Catherine had been a member of Rock Spring Congregational Church in Arlington, Virginia, since 1961, and she served the Church on the Religious Education committee and the church library book selection committee.

She was a Life Member of the Association of American Geographers, being elected to that organization in 1962.

She is survived by Sarah Elizabeth Carlston Ulis and Robert M. Ulis.

—Sara Elizabeth Carlston Ulis

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AAG Celebrates Earth Day Throughout April with International Student Fellows

International Students Presented Climate Impact Studies Through My Community, Our Earth / SERVIR Fellowship Program

[/media-credit] Joel Kowsky, NASA

In April, 14 students traveled from all over the world to Washington, D.C., to discuss their efforts using satellite data and mapping technologies to address climate change issues in their regions. The efforts are part of the My Community, Our Earth (MyCOE) / SERVIR Fellowship Program. The student-led projects address a range of issues including agricultural productivity, water resources, sea level change, food safety, forest conservation, and natural disaster planning.

The MyCOE / SERVIR Capstone Event celebrated the culmination of a global program carried out over the past two years, with representative student-led projects highlighting how youth around the world are using remote sensing, GIS, GPS, and geospatial data to address climate change issues in their regions. Several outstanding MyCOE / SERVIR fellows were selected to showcase their work to demonstrate the power of spatial data and geographic thinking. They were nominated by instructors and staff of the MyCOE Program and SERVIR hubs and chosen by U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and NASA from among the 120 participants of the 2012-2014 MyCOE / SERVIR Program.

These fellows hail from 10 countries and bring together four staggered regional rounds of 10-month fellowship terms. In early April, fellows met with USAID and NASA staff, scientists, and others in Washington, D.C., during symposia and exhibits convened at agency headquarters. During the presentations at the Washington, D.C. events, students answered questions asked by the public via Twitter, with the entire event broadcast live on NASA Television. A week later, they traveled to Tampa, Fla., to present their work in a featured illustrated paper session during the Association of American Geographers (AAG) annual meeting, which draws nearly 8,000 attendees from more than 60 countries. Through their stories and projects, the fellows showed the power of geographic data and technologies, showcasing the spirit and determination of young people to make a difference in their communities, our Earth.

“It is indeed an enriching experiences. I have always heard about research being so scholarly and professional field and somehow, I was skeptic about my attempt into doing a research. Nonetheless, after being invited and having done with the presentation or having met with those great persons and also after having met a lot of other people from around the globe, I am now a convert! I am encouraged, inspired and energized through this very program. It is been so great, indeed, one of the most fulfilling achievements of my life.” said Lhakpa, a student at the Royal University of Bhutan.

Prasamsa Thapa, a student at Kathmandu University in Nepal said, “The entire event was wonderful and I feel so glad that people appreciated my work. I feel like my hard work really paid off. … I am very much thankful to AAG, NASA, USAID, MyCOE/SERVIR who made us a star and always encourage us to do more good things.”

And, Lateefah Oyinlola, a student at Federal University of Agriculture, Abeokuta, Nigeria, declared, “The ball has successfully been set in motion.”

The MyCOE / SERVIR program supports long-term training of young, emerging scholars in the use of Earth observations, geography, and geospatial technologies to address climate change issues in developing regions. The public-private partnered program provides the mentorship, networking, and professional development necessary to transform innovators into scholars, with the skills to connect their research results to the public and decision makers. It is sponsored by NASA, USAID, and AAG, with the AAG also administering the program. SERVIR, an acronym meaning “to serve” in Spanish, is a joint venture between NASA and USAID. SERVIR works in partnership with leading regional organizations around the globe to help developing countries use information provided by Earth-observing satellites and geospatial technologies to better manage climate risks and sustainability of natural resources.

To learn more about the full My Community, Our Earth / SERVIR program, contact Project Director Dr. Patricia Solís at psolis [at] aag [dot] org. Or, visit https://www.aag.org/mycoe.servir. Read more detailed information on the NASA event.

AAG Continues Its Commitment to Geography Throughout the Year with Youth TechCamps Program

Later this summer, outstanding U.S. high school students will be selected to form teams with their scholastic counterparts in Bolivia, Panama, or South Africa to collaborate online and in person at one of three rounds of training events in these countries to address the theme of GeoTechnologies for Climate Change & Environment. Students will be given academic preparation, orientation, cultural exchange activities, mentoring and training in use of geotechnologies such as online mapping, community GIS, mobile GPS, and crowdmapping. Their work will be featured in an online project fair and showcased at national venues.

For more information, go to https://www.aag.org/cs/techcamps.

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AAG’s GeoCapabilities Project Researching Purposes, Values of Geography in Schools

geocapabilities students
The AAG’s Michael Solem (pictured center) recently visited a class of pre-service geography teachers at Beijing Normal University. Dr. Solem taught a short course based on the AAG’s GeoCapabilities initiative.

How does geography education contribute to human potential and wellbeing? How do different national curriculums express the purposes and values of geography?

The AAG’s GeoCapabilities project is exploring these questions in partnership with several universities and scientific organizations in different countries1. Through comparative methods, researchers are analyzing the ways geography is considered by nations to be a form of knowledge that enables the development of human capabilities.

Whereas much of the current reforms shaping curricula in schools and universities can be traced to neoliberal economic pressures for producing human capital (skills and competencies), capabilities offer a different (yet complementary) view of the role of education in human life. Rooted in the early writings of economist Amartya Sen and philosopher Martha Nussbaum, capabilities refer to sets of “functionings” that, once attained, provide people with real opportunities to reach their potential and wellbeing over the lifespan. The GeoCapabilities project is interested in the role of education, and specifically geography education, in affording people with intellectual, moral, and existential capabilities for lifelong learning, economic and social agency in citizenship, and the pursuit of personal wellbeing.

What, then, are the human capabilities that accrue from the knowledge gained from a geographical education? The GeoCapabilities project commenced in 2012 with a preliminary study focusing on the national geography curriculums and standards in the U.S., England and Finland (Solem, Lambert, & Tani, 2013). That work found that, despite the considerable variation in geography content and sequencing across grade levels, all three nations share a view that the role of geography in schools is to prepare students for life in specific ways, as follows.

First, geography promotes individual autonomy and freedom by cultivating the ability to use one’s imagination and to be able to think and reason with geographic information and concepts. A second capability of geography is being able to identify and exercise choices in how to live based on worthwhile distinctions with regard to citizenship and sustainability. A third contribution of geography to American, English, and Finnish education is the way the subject helps people see their potential as a creative and productive citizen in the context of the global economy and culture. Collectively, these are the ways geography education in the U.S., England, and Finland is seen to provide students with opportunities to achieve their life’s potential and wellbeing; without it, they are restricted and deprived in ways that have a real impact on their lives and others.

This initial set of three “geo-capabilities” is now being further elucidated in new studies involving teachers and schools in Turkey, Greece, and Belgium. With new funding from the European Commission’s COMENIUS program2, GeoCapabilities researchers will implement a series of qualitative studies through 2014, including interviews and surveys with teachers and teacher educators and comparative analyses of teacher preparation systems. Findings will inform the creation of an online platform for connecting teachers in different nations for discussions about curriculum making based on the capabilities approach.

Solem

Beyond Western Europe, the GeoCapabilities project has begun to initiate work in countries where educational cultures and newly emerging geography curriculums offer richer and more diverse contexts for exploring relationships between geography and human capabilities. In recent months the AAG’s Michael Solem traveled to Romania, Singapore and China to engage aspiring geography teachers in the work of the project. The aim was to interpret with these students their conceptions of human potential and wellbeing to understand better how they define the broader goals of geography in the school curriculum. After reflecting on examples of capabilities, the students were asked to develop and share their ideas for what a geography curriculum might look like if it were based on capabilities principles.

Although many students were able to create examples of classroom materials supporting geo-capabilities, some struggled with the challenge of thinking about capabilities as goals from which emanate specific learning objectives, activities, and teaching and assessment methods. One reason for this was the reliance on more didactic approaches to classroom instruction that students felt was expected of them. Although the national curriculums in China, Singapore, and other nations offer explicit statements on educational values and desired outcomes (e.g., fostering citizenship, personal freedom, care for the environment), many students exhibited a tendency to begin their lesson planning with a particular skill set or knowledge objective in mind, with no consideration of the broader purposes of teaching that content. This issue is common across the nations studied thus far and warrants further attention as the project proceeds in the coming years.

Moving forward the AAG and its partners on GeoCapabilities will continue to pursue new collaborations with geography educators who are interested in engaging questions pertaining to the purposes and values of geography in schools and universities. Please send questions and expressions of interest to the project director, Michael Solem, at msolem [at] aag [dot] org.

References

Solem, M., Lambert, D., and Tani, S. (2013) GeoCapabilities: Toward an international framework for researching the purposes and values of geography education. Review of International Geographical Education Online, 3(3): 214-229.

Acknowledgements

  1. The first phase of GeoCapabilities (2012-2014) was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Geography and Spatial Science program (Award BCS-1155255). Dr. Michael Solem (AAG) is the project director. The AAG expresses appreciation to its partner organizations: the Institute of Education in London, the University of Helsinki, the Grosvenor Center for Geographic Education at Texas State University, the European Association of Geographers, and the UK Geographical Association. Dr. Chang Chew Hung (National Institute of Education, Singapore), Dr. Wei Dongying (Beijing Normal University), Dr. Lv Runmei (East China Normal University), and Dr. Oana-Ramona Ilovan (Babes Bolyai University, Cluj Romania) provided helpful guidance and important logistical support for Dr. Solem’s project visits.
  2. The second phase of GeoCapabilities (2014-2016) is being funded by the European Commission’s COMENIUS program (539079-LLP-1-2013-1-UK-COMENIUS-CMP). Dr. David Lambert (Institute of Education, University of London) is the project coordinator. In addition to the phase 1 partners, new organizations include Eskisehir Osmangazi University in Turkey and several school partners in Greece, Finland, and England.
GeoCapabilities, geography education
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Philip Wagner

Phil Wagner, pre-eminent cultural geographer and professor emeritus at Simon Frazer University passed away on March 5, 2014, aged 92, after a period of illness.

Philip Laurence Wagner was born on October 7, 1921, in California and raised in Los Gatos near San Francisco. He was educated at the University of California, Berkeley, where he took all three degrees.

His bachelor’s degree was a double major in Russian language and Russian and Eastern European history (1947), an interest he continued in his master’s in geography with a thesis on “Russian Exploration in North America” (1950).

He then changed geographical area for his doctorate. He was one of the first generation of graduate students in the Berkeley School of Latin Americanist Geography under the supervision of Carl Sauer. His fieldwork in Costa Rica resulted in a thesis on “Nicoya: Historical Geography of a Central American Lowland Community” (1953).

Between 1953 and 1954, while serving as 1st Lieutenant in the U.S. Army, he taught courses to military personnel in the Far Eastern Program of the University of California Extension. It was here that he met Robert K. Hall, a famous linguist, who taught him Japanese and how to write Kanji characters.

After discharge from the military, Wagner gained an appointment as a research associate in the Slavic Languages and Literatures Program at the University of Chicago. In 1955, when Chauncy Harris became the Dean of Social Sciences, he elevated Wagner to a regular appointment as Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography.

Based on a course he taught on economic geography, he wrote The Human Use of the Earth (1960) in which he broke with convention and emphasized ecological, technological and even sociological factors rather than the economic order as such.

Working with Marvin Mikesell, they jointly introduced cultural geography as a new course in the Department of Geography. The shared venture led to the publication of Readings in Cultural Geography (1962), which became a staple textbook for the next four decades.

While a faculty member in the Department of Geography, he was also involved with the Anthropology Department’s Chiapas Project in Mexico. It was in connection with the Chiapas Project that he got the late David Hill interested in doing his doctoral dissertation on the changing landscape of Villa Las Rosas, a Mexican municipality in the Chiapas.

In 1961, Wagner moved to the University of California, Davis, where he was Associate Professor in both the Departments of Anthropology and Geography. He also spent some of his time teaching cultural geography at University of California, Berkeley.

The next move was in the fall of 1967 when he was appointed Professor of Geography in the new fledgling Simon Fraser University in Canada. His arrival immediately raised the visibility of the university and added stature to the geography department. Given his Berkeley, Chicago and Davis experiences, Wagner was asked to set up the Geography Graduate Studies program. He was also instrumental in helping the university to establish the Latin American Studies (LAS) program and participated actively in the LAS Field School including teaching on fieldtrips to Guatemala and Cuba.

In addition to these new programs, Wagner found time to promote interdisciplinary dialogue among faculty members and graduate students. Together with Dr Wyn Roberts, a professor of linguistics, they formed a weekly study group called the Pi-Digamma Seminar. It was a forum where interested colleagues, grad students and friends would meet to discuss any topic of interdisciplinary interest to the university community. Many who participated remember these exchanges as being some of the best dialogues they ever had during the early years at Simon Fraser University.

During this period, Wagner was also Editor of the Prentice-Hall Foundations of Cultural Geography Series. Under his editorship, six volumes were published including his own Environments and Peoples (1972), as well as Sopher’s Geography of Religion (1967), Rapoport’s House Form and Culture (1969), Isaac’s Geography of Domestication (1970), Zelinsky’s Cultural Geography of the United States (1973) and Hart’s Rural Landscapes of the Western World (1975).

Wagner became a member of the Association of American Geographers in 1953. As an active cultural geographer, he was much sought after by AAG Committees, serving as a Councilor of the Steering Committee of the High School Project, as well as a member of the College Commission of Geography. He was also a member of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers and served as their Vice President and President (1972-4).

In 1987, Wagner was presented with the AAG’s highest honors award for distinguished contributions to the geographic profession. The citation recognized “his unwavering dedication to scholarship, his distinguished career in cultural geography, and his numerous contributions to knowledge and to the geographic profession.”

Retirement as professor emeritus in 1987 did not bring an end to Wagner’s scholarly activities. His lifetime travels and observations in human communication motivated him to write his seminal work Showing Off: the Geltung Hypothesis which was published in 1996. The book is an exploration into human communities, and the desire for recognition and status in human behaviour. It is such behavioral expressions and feedback that affect the spatial organization of human performance and provide the artificial environment for geltung, i.e., the feeling of importance and worth in being recognized. It was his hope that geltung would attract cultural geographers and social scientists to seek and to explore their understanding of communicative behaviour in the human-environment interaction continuum.

Wagner should not only be remembered as an innovative and creative scholar but also a competent linguist. He could speak, read and write half a dozen languages (English, German, French, Spanish, Polish and Russian) and could read at least another half a dozen languages (Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, Swedish, Japanese and Farsi).

He was also a talented artist. He drew and sketched on fieldtrips around the world which included all the pilgrim tombs, temples and stone mosques that he visited when he wrote his article on “Pilgrimage: Culture and Geography” in Sacred Places, Sacred Spaces (1997). Some of his sketches can be seen on his website.

The death of Phil is a great loss to geography. He will be dearly missed by all those who knew him as well as those who were influenced by his writings. He leaves behind his beloved wife, Margaret, son, Tomas, and granddaughter, Bianca.

For a more detailed treatment of Philip Wagner’s career, personality and academic contributions, see Wong, S. T. (1992) “Philip L. Wagner: An Appreciation” in Shue Tuck Wong (ed.) Person, Place and Thing: Interpretative and Empirical Essays in Cultural Geography Baton Rouge, LA: Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, pp15-30.

With thanks to Shue Tuck Wong, Professor Emeritus, Department of Geography, Simon Fraser University for preparing this obituary.

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Annual Meeting

Past President’s Address Focuses on Thinking Geographically, Globally

Thinking Geographically: Globalizing Capitalism, and Beyond

In the spirit of strengthening our intellectual foundations and clarifying our contributions to shaping Earth I advocate for thinking geographically, as a way of being in the world that all can join, rather than policing the boundaries of a discipline called Geography. Thinking geographically means attending to: the geography of knowledge production; how spatio-temporalities shape and are shaped by socio-natural processes; the more-than-human world as it emerges from the interdependencies between human conception and action and biophysical processes; the variegated ontologies, epistemologies and methodologies underlying knowledge claims; and the world not only as it is but as it could be. Thinking geographically does not seek consensus around some monist body of knowledge, grounded in Lakatosian hard-core principles. It means advocating engaged pluralism: ongoing open-ended debate and mutual criticism between differently positioned knowledge producers willing to learn from one another’s local epistemologies.

What are the implications of thinking geographically about globalizing capitalism? First, it is necessary to problematize the European positionalities from which commonsense understandings of capitalism diffused. Europe did not invent capitalism, but the spatial dynamics of colonialism that elevated Europe to the global core also made it globalizing capitalism’s center of calculation. Globally influential theories of capitalism thus were European in origin, grounded in European Enlightenment thinkers’ encounters with the forms that emerged in eighteenth and nineteenth century northwestern Europe. British capitalism, in particular, became the basis for defining capitalism, and the whetting stone on which theories of capitalism were sharpened. Across Europe, other socio-spatial positionalities generated very different conceptions of capitalism, from the free trade proponents of English political economy, to the trenchant critiques of that socialist German immigrant Karl Marx, or the nationalist vision of Friedrich List. Thinkers positioned beyond the European realm, such as Latin American dependency theorists or the Africans Samir Amin and Frantz Fanon, have also shaped global debate—albeit about the consequences rather than the definition of capitalism. Notwithstanding such interventions, the local epistemology that is global commonsense, and the model of capitalism underwriting it, remains rooted in eighteenth century English political economy with its influential proponents.

Second, thinking geographically about this economic model raises serious questions about its internal coherence. Capitalism cannot be described in terms of an idealized equilibrium outcome where markets clear, but exhibits out-of-equilibrium dynamical complexity characterized by path-dependence, instability, unpredictability, conflict and uneven geographical development. In a spatially differentiated economy, the ‘free’ markets propounded by neoliberal visions of capitalism cannot be self-regulating and harmonious; their creation and maintenance require continual spatio-temporal interventions by extra-market forces. Indeed, capitalism cannot be understood, or successfully practiced, simply as an economic process; its economic aspects are co-implicated with political, cultural, social and biophysical processes, in ways that repeatedly exceed the ‘laws of economics’. This undermines the vision of globalizing capitalism as a rising tide capable of lifting all boats, bringing prosperity to all hard-working and responsible individuals and well-governed territories.

Third, thinking geographically questions the capacity of globalizing capitalism to deliver on its own promise. The mainstream vision of capitalism inclines to a place-based imaginary: Success or failure is generally attributed to characteristics (e.g., culture, climate, governance, coherence) of the entities being assessed—whether individuals, cities, regions or nations. Yet such place-based explanations are insufficient and misleading. Socio-economic performance is equally shaped by the asymmetric connectivities between places, and the inter-scalar dynamics, that co-evolve with uneven geographical development. Further, market-based principles are inadequate for redressing political, cultural or biophysical conflict or dysfunction.

It follows that globalizing capitalism (as we know it) cannot be considered the best practice culmination of some ubiquitously applicable developmental trajectory, mandatory for the success of every territorial economy. Far from being the go-to solution to impoverishment, globalizing capitalism’s uneven geographical development is itself productive of social and geographical inequality—realizing possibilities for those occupying privileged socio-spatial positionalities while undermining them for the majority. It is thus necessary to acknowledge space for alternative, more-than-capitalist experiments and trajectories, enriched by peripheral experiences of and encounters with globalizing capitalism. These alternatives cannot simply be read off from well-trodden European-style debates about capitalism vs. socialism; thinking geographically induces skepticism about the adequacy of any ubiquitous ‘best practice’ alternative. There is a plurality of distinctly situated existing and potential alternatives, whose impact on the livelihood possibilities of both those pursuing them and those living otherwise (and elsewhere) should be critically assessed. This will require reciprocal critical engagement between alternatives, and the political and moral grounds motivating them.

Eric Sheppard, UCLA

The Past President’s Address will take place at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, April 10, 2014, at the AAG Annual Meeting in Tampa, Florida. Eric Sheppard will present the 2013 Presidential Achievement Award to Doreen Massey. See www.aag.org/annualmeeting for details and to register.

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President's Column

University Research Centers: An Opportunity or Challenge for Geography?

Winkler_JulieThe number of research centers on university campuses has grown substantially in the past several decades, in part a response to funding opportunities offered by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and other major funding agencies. These agencies have helped to promote this organizational structure via their requests for proposals for science and engineering centers to support cutting-edge, interdisciplinary research. Universities themselves have contributed to this trend, establishing on-campus research centers to enhance extramural funding, publication and other research outputs, and student training.

Research centers vary in administration, size, and mission. Typically they lie outside the traditional departmental structure of universities, although ties to individual departments can be strong. Research centers range from those involving only a few faculty to national-level centers that span multiple institutions. Some centers are relatively ephemeral. They are established in response to a particular funding opportunity and are dissolved when that funding terminates. Others are long-lived with center members seeking ongoing extramural support from a range of funding agencies. Although research centers are now a common component of the university landscape, our understanding of the impact of these centers on individual researchers, departments, universities, disciplines, and the advancement of scientific knowledge is relatively limited. In this column, I explore the advantages offered by research centers and the challenges they pose, particularly with respect to the discipline of geography and geography departments.

A primary rationale for research centers is to foster research on complex, interdisciplinary topics and issues. When successful, centers enhance a university’s visibility within a particular research area, help attract exceptional faculty and graduate students, and strengthen the university’s overall research reputation. In addition, research centers can contribute to a university’s agility to respond to, and participate in, emerging research themes that do not fit well with existing departmental specializations or disciplinary approaches. These centers can enhance the research profiles of individual faculty as well. Faculty affiliated with a center typically are provided release time from teaching and additional research support (e.g., laboratory space, equipment). Recent case studies, including an analysis of the activities of scientists allied with the Mid-America Earthquake Center by Branco Ponomariov and Craig Boardman, suggest that, on average, faculty affiliated with research centers have higher productivity, greater collaboration, increased industry connections, and more technology transfer  (e.g., patents) than those not affiliated with a center.

But research centers also present challenges. There is the inevitable competition for limited university resources between research centers and departments, and between faculty affiliated with centers and those whose appointments lie strictly within a department. Research centers can also spark on-campus debate regarding the relative importance of disciplinary versus interdisciplinary knowledge, with potential consequences for the continued viability of traditional disciplinary departments. Faculty do not appear to benefit equally from their involvement in a research center. For instance, Meghna Sabharwal and Qian Hu discovered that senior faculty are more likely to benefit from the collaborative opportunities of research centers than junior faculty. Also, Marla Parker and Eric Welch found that women faculty are much more unlikely than men to serve in leadership roles within a research center, limiting, in their words, women’s impact on “knowledge production and the conduct of science,” both at their universities and for science in general. Another concern is whether traditional departments receive appropriate recognition for the efforts and successes of their faculty who are affiliated with a research center. Also, the proliferation of research centers is an issue. As the number of on-campus research centers grows, university resources for pursuing emerging research directions decrease because of the large capital and human investment in existing centers. Thus, the university loses, rather than gains, nimbleness. University attempts to debulk themselves of research centers in order to free up resources for new opportunities are often complicated by a lack of well-tested procedures for evaluating the performance and continuing relevance of research centers. Also, research centers become entrenched, making them difficult to sunset, and closures can cause considerable hardship for support staff and research faculty. Furthermore, the viability of research centers ebbs and flows with the availability of federal funding.

I became concerned about possible negative impacts of research centers on geography departments about a year ago, when I served on a university-wide committee charged with developing a hiring plan for a new campus-wide research initiative. As we discussed possible tenure homes for potential hires, I was nonplussed when a fellow committee member stated that university expertise in geographic information science (GIS) lies in Center X, followed a few minutes later by another member announcing that expertise in climatology lies in Center Y. Both comments elicited a quick response from me that expertise in these areas in fact falls within the Department of Geography. But this exchange prompted contemplation on whether my department’s close association with several research centers has led to a reduction in on-campus visibility for geography itself, and whether geography is more susceptible to this possibility than other disciplines. Many of our university colleagues are unfamiliar with geography as a discipline or even hold misperceptions of what constitutes geography, which may make it easier for them to assign subfields within geography, even those with “geographic” in their name, to a center rather than a department. Also, the relatively small size of geography departments compared to other departments on campus may make them more vulnerable to the negative impacts of research centers. For example, the siphoning of partial credit for accomplishments of faculty to research centers in which they are members potentially can have a larger impact on the “bottom line” for a smaller rather than larger department, especially if a substantial portion of the faculty have center affiliations.

On the other hand, geography may benefit more from affiliation with research centers compared to many other disciplines. The breadth of geography offers possibilities for participation by geographers in a wide range of research centers, providing opportunities for on-campus promotion of the discipline and hopefully increased recognition by others of the theoretical contributions and skills of geographers. Also, smaller departments, including many geography departments, stand to benefit greatly from additional resources available through their connection with research centers, such as faculty lines or support for a larger cadre of graduate students. Research centers also provide excellent training opportunities for geography graduate students, and allow for interdisciplinary research opportunities for geography faculty that they might not otherwise have. All of these can enhance the long-term success of a geography department.

Clearly, university research centers present both opportunities and challenges. Geography departments need to continuously monitor their involvement and interactions with university research centers to make certain that they take full advantage of the opportunities these centers offer, but at the same time ensure that they receive appropriate university recognition and visibility for departmental contributions to research centers. The desired end result is that the involvement of a geography department in research centers directly or indirectly furthers the careers of all faculty within the department, and enhances the department’s reputation at the university level and within the discipline of geography and the scientific community at large.

I look forward to hearing your thoughts on the connections between geography departments and university research centers.

— Julie Winkler

DOI: 10.14433/2014.0001

For more information on the articles referred to above see:

“Influencing scientists’ collaboration and productivity patterns through new institutions: University research centers and scientific and technical human capital” by Branco L. Ponomariov and P. Craig Boardman in Research Policy, Volume 39, pages 613-624, 2010, DOI:10.1016/j.respol.2010.02.013

“Professional networks, science ability, and gender determinants of three types of leadership in academic science and engineering” by Marla Parker and Eric W. Welch in The Leadership Quarterly, Volume 24, pages 332-348, 2013, DOI:10.1016/j.leaqua.2013.01.001

“Participation in university-base research centers: Is it helping or hurting researchers?” by Meghna Sabharwal and Qian Hu in Research Policy, Volume 42, pages 1301-1311, 2013, DOI:10.1016/j.respol.2013.03.005

 

 

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Julie Winkler
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Annual Meeting

Winkler’s Presidential Plenary to Kick Off Climate Change Theme

Winkler_JulieClimate change is a major environmental challenge facing humankind today. Geographies of Climate Change, a featured theme for the upcoming AAG Annual Meeting in Tampa, highlights the complex spatial dimensions of climate change including the observed and anticipated geographical differentiation in potential impacts and vulnerability. The theme will address such topics as the scientific complexity and uncertainty of climate change, its political and policy contextualization, the challenges of formulating adaptation and mitigation strategies, and the importance of effective communication strategies.  The Presidential Plenary that opens the Annual Meeting will focus on this theme, and will feature four leading experts in the area of climate change research.

Hulme
ShepherdMoser

 

 

 

 

Mike Hulme is professor of climate and culture in the Department of Geography at King’s College London.  His work explores the idea of climate change using historical, cultural and scientific analyses, seeking to illuminate the numerous ways in which climate change is deployed in public and political discourse.  His latest book – Can Science Fix Climate Change? A Case Against Climate Engineering (Polity) – is due out in April.  He is also the author of Exploring Climate Change Through Science and In Society (Routledge), Making Climate Change Work For Us (Cambridge) and Why We Disagree About Climate Change (Cambridge).  This latter book was chosen by The Economist magazine as one of its science and technology books of the year.  From 2000 to 2007 he was the Founding Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, based at the University of East Anglia, and since 2007 has been the founding Editor-in-Chief of the review journal Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews (WIREs) Climate Change.

Linda Mearns is a Senior Scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), and serves as NCAR’s Director of the Weather and Climate Impacts Assessment Science Program and Head of the Regional Integrated Sciences Collective within the Institute for Mathematics Applied to Geosciences.   She has performed research and published mainly in the areas of climate change scenario formation, quantifying uncertainties, and climate change impacts on agro-ecosystems, and has worked extensively with regional climate models. She was an author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) 1995, 2001, 2007, and 2013 assessments.   She leads the multi-agency supported North American Regional Climate Change Assessment Program (NARCCAP), which is providing multiple high-resolution climate change scenarios for the North American impacts community.

Susanne (Susi) Moser is Director and Principal Researcher of Susanne Moser Research & Consulting, a Social Science Research Fellow at Stanford University’s Woods Institute for the Environment, and a Research Associate of the Institute for Marine Sciences at the University of California-Santa Cruz. As a nationally and internationally recognized expert in climate change adaptation, communication for social change, and science-policy interactions, she works with researchers, governmental and non-governmental organizations in the US, Europe and Australia. She contributed to the Fourth and Fifth Assessment Reports of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and was a Review Editor for the IPCC Special Report on extreme events, disaster risk management and adaptation. She also is a member of the federal advisory committee on the Third US National Climate Assessment and serves as one of the Convening Lead Authors on its coastal chapter. She is a fellow of the Aldo Leopold Leadership, Kavli Frontiers of Science, Donella Meadows Leadership, Google Science Communication, and Walton Sustainability Solutions Programs.

Marshall Shepherd is the 2013 President of the American Meteorological Society.  He is the UGA Athletic Association Professor of Geography at the University of Georgia and director of the University’s Atmospheric Sciences Program. Prior to joining the University of Georgia faculty, Shepherd was a research meteorologist in the Earth-Sun Division at NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center and deputy project scientist for the Global Precipitation Measurement mission.  In 2004, he received the PECASE Award, one the nation’s highest scientific awards, for pioneering research on urban-hydroclimate relationships.  Dr. Shepherd currently serves on the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Science Advisory Board, the Earth Science Subcommittee of the NASA Advisory Council,  the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Visiting Expert Committee and numerous other high level committees. He co-authored a recent National Academy of Sciences report on urban meteorology and is working on the Wiley textbook, The Urban Climate System. He is also the Climatology Editor for the AAG Encyclopedia of Geography.

Annual Meeting, climate change, J. Marshall Shepherd, Julie Winkler, Linda Mearns, Mike Hulme, presidential plenary, Susanne Moser
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Donald Wagman

Donald Wagman, former owner of the Geography Limited map and book store in Ann Arbor, passed away on January 24, 2014, aged 65.

Donald Murray Wagman was born in Manhattan, New York, in 1948, although the family soon moved to New Jersey. He later graduated from Cornell University and Stanford University.

Wagman’s map and book store, Geography Limited, was a west side fixture in Ann Arbor until it closed in 2004. He sold maps and atlases and globes, as well as geography and travel books. His maps were of every kind imaginable and from all over the world – topographical, reproduction antique, road and railroad maps, street plans, and literary maps, to name just a few. His biggest sellers were Michigan topographical maps, used in summer by vacationers, in fall by hunters, and year-round by engineers and environmental consultants.

Donald was predeceased by his wife, Janet Amrose, but leaves behind his daughter, Maida Amrose-Wagman, and many friends across the country.

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Awardees

AAG Names Warren Washington its 2014 Honorary Geographer

The Association of American Geographers has chosen Warren M. Washington to receive the 2014 AAG Honorary Geographer Award for his contributions as a pioneer in the development of coupled climate models and recognizes him as a leading scientist in the area of climate variability and change.

Coupled climate models are now a foundation of climate science, and geographers have been among the many scientists who have extensively employed these models to better understand the complex climate system. The AAG also acknowledges Washington’s leadership role as an advocate for science in general, particularly his service as chair of the National Science Board. Furthermore, this award acknowledges his many contributions as a role model and mentor for young scientists, including members of the geographic community, and his commitment to advancing diversity.

Washington is a senior scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), where he also serves as Chief Scientist of the DOE/UCAR Cooperative Agreement in the Climate Change Research Section in the center’s Climate and Global Dynamics Division. Born in Portland, Ore., Washington developed an interest in science at an early age. His interest led him to pursue a bachelor’s degree in physics and a master’s in meteorology from Oregon State University. He then went on to earn a doctorate in meteorology from Pennsylvania State University. According to his NCAR biography, Washington joined the center in 1963 as a research scientist.

Inaugurated in 1997, the AAG bestows its Honorary Geographer Award each year on an individual to recognize excellence in the arts, research, teaching, and writing on geographic topics by non-geographers. Previous awardees have included economist Jeffrey Sachs, biologist Stephen J. Gould, science historian Charles Mann, author Barbara Kingsolver, Nobel Laureate in economics Paul Krugman, authors Calvin Trillin and Barry Lopez, sociologist Saskia Sassen, and architect Maya Lin.

The 2014 AAG Honorary Geographer Award will be presented to Warren M. Washington at the upcoming AAG Annual Meeting in Tampa, Fla., during a special awards luncheon on Saturday, April 12, 2014.

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