Student Accomplishments
The Department encourages students to attend and participate in professional geography meetings
whenever possible. While the national meetings of the Association of American Geographers are
generally out of the reach of most students in terms of cost and time commitment, CSUS Geography
students have regularly attended meetings of regional geographic organizations such as the Association of
Pacific Coast Geographers (APCG) and the California Geographical Society on a regular basis. In
September 2003, Robin Datel organized a van pool and housing arrangements to take a group of students
to that year’s APCG meetings in Portland. In September 2004 a group of majors, working through the
recently revitalized student Geography Club, attended the APCG meetings in San Louis Obispo.
In addition to encouraging attendance at these meetings, faculty in the Department have encouraged
students to actively participate in them through formal presentation of their own work. On several
occasions this has taken the form of joint faculty-student research projects. In Fall 2001, Tom Krabacher
and student Deborah Daniels (an M.A. student in Biological Sciences) presented a joint paper
(“Rinderpest, Cattle, and Cultural Catastrophe in Nineteenth Century Africa”) at the national meetings of
the American Anthropological Association in Washington, DC. In Fall 2004, Robin Datel and student
Christopher Dougherty presented a joint paper (“Identifying Important African-American Places in
Sacramento”) at the APCG meetings in San Luis Obispo. This coming April, Jim Wanket and student
Heather Bills are scheduled to present a joint paper at the California Geographical Society meeting in
Yosemite. Not all student presentations are done jointly, however. Geography major Ronaldo “Ronnie”
Caluza won the President’s Award for Outstanding Student Poster Presentation at the 2004 APCG
meetings for his poster presentation “Exploring the Presence of Filipinos in South Sacramento,” a project
that originally grew out of work done for Tim Hallinan in GEOG 102.
In addition to encouraging student involvement in professional geographic organizations, effort is made to
assist majors in career preparation as well. A portion of GEOG 102 is devoted to bringing in outside
speakers (many former majors) to speak with the class about employment opportunities in Geograph yrelated
careers. Majors are also encouraged in their senior year to take an internship with state or local
agencies whenever possible. (The Department maintains a current list of internship opportunities for
student use.) Students find that many of the skills acquired in the major, especially GIS, make them
attractive as interns, and this has often led to full-time employment upon graduation.
