Faculty Publications and Presentation on Teaching
In keeping with University policy, the mission of the University, College and Department, and the reality
of the teaching workloads, faculty members in Geography place the main emphasis of their professional
lives upon teaching. They devote a large portion of their energy to teaching-related professional
development. Their activity includes remaining current in the subject matter of their specialties,
developing new courses and redesigning existing ones, and learning and practicing new methods of
teaching and advising. A large part of each faculty member’s general reading in hard copy and web-based
sources as well as the fruits of more specialized research, including field work, support the preparation
and presentation of the Department’s courses. These courses require familiarity with the current and often
rapidly changing conditions of the physical and human characteristics of the Earth’s surface. They also
require familiarity with new methods and technology of investigation as well as recent interpretations and
explanations. Faculty teaching technical courses (for example, cartography and GIS) must continually
master the latest software. Given the relatively small size of the Department and the large teaching loads,
each faculty member must maintain currency in a broad array of topics, regions and techniques. The
types of faculty involvement in teaching-related professional development are described below.
Many members of the faculty have participated in workshops and other training sessions for the purpose
of improving their teaching. For example, in August 2000 the Department held a teaching workshop to
discuss teaching strategies and promote the exchange of ideas about teaching methods and materials.
Such exchanges routinely occur among members of the Department on an individual basis as well.
Faculty members have attended workshops pertaining to such topics as writing assignments, Powerpoint
presentations, service learning, problem-based learning, the use of web-based data, the design of
assignments, and the latest versions of sophisticated software programs. In 2004 the Department held an
advising workshop for its four probationary faculty.
Extensive course development has occurred during the period under review. This has included two new
courses: GEOG 110 (Advanced Geographic Information Systems) and GEOG 163 (Applied GIS). Four
new courses have been developed by the new faculty who have joined the Department in the past two
years: GEOG 116 (Global Climate Change), GEOG 148 (Urban and Regional Planning), GEOG 149
(Transportation Geography), and GEOG 182 (Internet Geographic Information Systems), all of which are
scheduled to be taught for the first time in the 2005-2006 academic year. The five new faculty who have
joined us beginning in Fall 2001 have taken up many of the Department’s existing offerings, often
presenting such courses for the first time in their teaching career and investing much time and energy into
their design. These have included GEOG 115 (Geography of Plants and Animals), GEOG 117 (Land
Forms), GEOG 118 (The Changing Earth Ecosystems), GEOG 126 (Geography of East Asia), GEOG 128
(Geography of Europe), GEOG 147 (Urban Geography), GEOG 193A (Field Geography: Urban-
Metropolitan) and GEOG 193C (Field Geography: Physical). Tenured faculty in the Department have
continued their dedication to revising courses as needed to ensure up-to-date subject matter, the
incorporation of new techniques and effective and imaginative assignments and other methods of
evaluating students’ performance.
An extraordinary amount of energy, time and skill each semester is devoted to bringing into the classroom
the newest computer-based software by means of laboratory exercises that must be invented, prepared and
tested. The instructors of our computer-based courses also must serve as their own lab technicians, given
the Department’s lack of financial resources to employ a formal laboratory technician. An important
strength of the Department’s courses is the continuing commitment to providing students with field
experience by means of courses as well as ad hoc trips. These are particularly labor-intensive for the
several faculty members who present them, requiring field reconnaissance, logistical preparation and
support and invention of challenging field assignments. In the context of urban field geography one
faculty member incorporated a service learning project that involved students in interviewing members of
neighborhoods. During the past six years all members of the faculty have expanded the role of the
Internet in their courses. Examples include home pages with online materials, web-based research and
preparation of finished assignments, lists of web-based resources pertinent to curricular development for
prospective K-12 teachers and to the study of particular topics and regions for all students. Indicative of
the professional development of several faculty members is their versatility in preparing and offering as
many as four to six different courses in a given academic year and as many as eight in the past six years.
