Penn State Department of Geography Summer/Fall 2009 Newsletter

Parks and PeoPle:Geographers pilot new education abroad initiative in South Africa

nature/society gisciences humanphysical

Vol. 6 Summer/Fall 2009

GePenn StateGePGePGe en tatette

graphy

2 | Summer/Fall 2009

Geography gaining popularity as an interdisciplinary research field

2 From the Department Head3 Undergraduate student news4-5 Graduate student news5 Faculty and staff news6 Alumni news7 Alumna profile: Jenni Hesterman8 Grad student brings toilets to Nepali village9 Faculty profile: Brian King

10 Penn State SWIG honored11 Geography hosting GEMS Seminar12-13 Parks and People Education Abroad program14 John A. Dutton e-Education Institute news15 Geospatial Revolution project has Geography link15 Faculty news: New GIS professor16 Donors

In thIs Issue

Department highlights

2009September16-18 Department of Geography and Graduates of Earth and Mineral Sciences GEMS Seminar. University Park, Pa.19 GEMS tailgate. University Park, Pa.24-27 National Conference on Geography Education. San Juan, Puerto Rico

OctOber16-18 Homecoming weekend23-24 Pennsylvania Geographical Society Annual meeting. West Chester, Pa.

NOvember6-7 Middle States AAG Regional Meeting. New Paltz, N.Y.13 Late-drop deadline15-21 International Cartography Confer-ence. Santiago, Chile23-29 Thanksgiving holiday, no classes

December11 Classes end19 Commencement

2010JaNuary11 Spring 2010 semester begins 18 Martin Luther King Day, no classes

march8-12 Spring break

april14-18 AAG Annual Meeting. Washington, D.C.30 Classes end

Editor's note: This column is excerpted from Karl Zimmerer's presen-tation on April 24 of the annual Ralph Brown Memorial Lecture at the Department of Geography, University of Minnesota.

I nterdisciplinary is “in” within geography. It has gained the center of attention in research, teaching, and service-outreach trends in the discipline, arguably

as never before. A few months ago a synopsis and ringing endorsement of geography and interdisciplinary approaches were highlighted in the Past President’s Address at this year’s AAG meeting in Las Vegas. Tom Baerwald, currently the senior science advisor in the Division of Behavioral and Cogni-tive Science at NSF, was able to draw a wide-ranging array of examples and insights. Tom’s talk, “Prospects for Geography as an Interdisciplinary Discipline,” pointed clearly and convinc-ingly to rapid growth in the number and magnitude of our field’s engagement with interdisciplinary endeavors.

Another sign of interdisciplinary's being “in” is the design of forthcoming special issues of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. Special “fifth issues” of the journal, to be published each year, will be devoted to timely interdisciplinary topics to which geography has much to contribute. The first spe-cial issue is to be released this December. It consists of articles on geographic research that address the interdisciplinary topic of peace and conflict. Subsequent special issues are already under way at the Annals to address similarly vital interdisciplinary topics. Climate change will be the focus of the special fifth issue in 2010. In 2011, the Annals will devote the special fifth issue to the vitally important topic of energy. Examples mentioned here are but a few of the many advance of geography’s full-fledged engage-ment with interdisciplinary approaches.

While interdisciplinary is very much “in,” it is not entirely new. Tom’s message and the Annals' special fifth issues emerge from longstanding interests in geography and among numerous geographers. These new landmarks chart a course that is somewhat familiar and extremely welcome to many of us. Indeed, the success of new ventures is able to connect with deep-rooted experiences among countless geographers. Personally, interdisciplinary capacity had been an extremely important criterion when it came time for me to select gradu-ate school and eventually choose geography. To be sure, I was already headed in a fairly interdisciplinary direction after having taken my undergraduate degrees in biology and physics. Still there were numerous options, since the other graduate programs I had considered were ones in ecology, public health, and anthropology, in addition to geography. The capacity of geography to frame interdisciplinary research was

what helped draw me, as it has numerous faculty and students in the Penn State department and many others.

Likely the most renowned examples of interdisciplinary's being “in” are ones that connect across geography to other larger fields. This kind of discovery of geography offers abundant illustrations, albeit

some surprisingly unconnected to the discipline. Indeed some discoverers tend to forge their own idea of geography, rather than adopting geographic approaches per se. Still, in general, the discovery of geography has been wildly successful in not a small number of interdisciplinary adventurers from the outside. As many of you know, Forbes Magazine features a regular column on economic geography by Joel Kotkin, and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman received the Nobel Prize in economics in recognition of his work on how economies of scale affect international trade patterns. Other examples are scattered across the geographic sub-fields. The works of Jared Diamond and Jeffrey Sachs, for example, hinge on ideas of human-environment interaction in order to relate global ecological and environmental conditions non-determin-istically (well almost) to social and economic change.

For me, seeing “Geography as home” is as vital as a guiding image in the rise of interdisciplinarity. In other words, geography can and must serve as a kind of home base of dis-ciplinary rigor and dynamism. At the same time, engaging in interdisciplinary approaches, whether in research, teaching, or service-outreach, is akin to the productive and vitally important experience of travel. The point is that the discipline of geog-raphy can and should serve as a place of “home” in order to enable a full and productive engagement with interdisciplinary approaches. In my view, the success of our interdisciplinary works will depend on similarly strong support and develop-ment of the home discipline, such as geography.

Karl ZimmererDepartment Head

[email protected]

This newsletter is a publication of the Department of Geography in the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences at Penn State.

contact us at:Department of Geography302 Walker BuildingPenn State UniversityUniversity Park, PA 16802Phone: 814-865-3433Fax: 814-863-7943URL: www.geog.psu.eduE-mail: [email protected]

Design/editorial content: Mike DawsonAdditional editors: Jodi Vender, Karl Zimmerer

U Ed. EMS 10-30

This publication is available in alternative media. Penn State is committed to affirmative action, equal opportunity, and the diversity of its workforce.

From the department head www.geog.psu.edu

lauren Borsa (B.S. human option) moved to South Africa in August 2009 for a year to do volunteer work.

o’shannon M. Burns (B.S., physical/environmental option) is interning in Fall 2009 with National Geo-graphic in Washington, D.C., with the Committee for Research, Conservation and Exploration.

Marcus kellam (B.S. human option) plans to enter the U.S. Marine Corps for officer training.

Josh klein (B.S., GIS option) is working for Terrasim Inc. in Pittsburgh as a database construction specialist.

alex Matus (B.S. Meteorology, GIS minor) is pursu-ing an M.S. in atmospheric sciences at Texas A&M University.

Valarie a. troya (B.S., GIS option) is working for the U.S. Navy as a surface warfare officer in Little Creek, Va.

abena sandra Yeboa (B.S. urban/regional develop-ment option) will teach secondary math for Teach for America in Philadelphia.

kaitlin Walsh (B.S. physical/environmental option) is attending graduate school in Fall 2009 in the School of Earth Sciences at Ohio State University. She’ll study glacier dynamics as a research as-sistant at the Byrd Polar Research Center.

Matthew Popek (B.S. urban/regional develop-ment) is attending Temple University’s Ambler campus in the fall to begin a master’s degree program in community and regional planning.

ashley Grohal (B.S. GIS option) has taken a job at BAE Systems in Pittsburgh.

andrew uhl (B.A. Geography) has been commis-sioned as an ensign in the U.S. Navy and begins his career aboard the U.S.S. James E. Williams, a guided missile destroyer in Norfolk, Va. A couple of the ship’s primary missions may be protecting an aircraft carrier from air- and sea-based threats or conducting operations to counter growing piracy off the horn of Africa.

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www.geog.psu.edu

Congratulations, Class of 2009!

UnderGradUate neWS

Lawrence Bartges Jr.Lauren Borsa William BrownNicholas BuergerO’Shannon Burns Matthew CalamitoSean CollinsDaniel Desiderio Christopher GabrisAshley Grohal Sarah Helble Timothy R. Johnson Marcus KellamJonathan Kistler Joshua Klein Rosemary Lanzara

Deirdre McAndrewsErik Olson Nancy PazmiñoNicholas Pinto Matthew PopekEmma Prince Michael RamerJacqueline Schuler Alexandra Shirk Timothy Small Ian SmithPolycarp TamValarie TroyaKaitlin WalshAnthony Yates Abena Sandra Yeboa

William KafesR. Scott Murray Jr.Rachel SamuelsAndrew Uhl

bachelOr Of ScieNce

bachelOr Of artS

Where are graduating seniors headed?4

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seth dixon (Ph.D. 2009) accepted an assistant professor position at Rhode Island College in Providence. It is a joint appointment between the Political Science Department, which houses Geography) and the Education Stud-ies Department, which supervises student teaching for secondary edu-cation majors.

andrei Israel (M.S.) received a three-year Gradu-ate Research Fellowship from the

National Science Foundation to support Ph.D. study and research.

Andrei plans to continue and expand his Master’s research on place-based education, service learning, and field-

based geography education.

laura spess was award-ed a Foreign Language Area Studies fellowship to study Urdu at the South Asia Summer Language Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Jessica hayes-Conroy(Ph.D. 2009) accepted

a post-doctoral teaching position at Wheaton

College in Norton, Mass. She will teach envi-

ronmental studies and women's studies.

Congratulations, spring 2009 graduate student graduates!

Ph.d.:Seth Dixon

Brian Tomaszeswki

M.s.:Maureen Biermann

Patrick HaggePeter Howe

Margaret McGunegleSteven McGunegle

Brentley MoatsAdam NaitoJared Oyler

GeoGraPhY Grads Go GloBe-trottInG: a look at What theY dId thIs suMMer

Maureen Biermann (m.S. 2009) attended the united Nations university institute for envi-ronment and human Security’s Summer acad-emy on Social vulnerability. it was a weeklong program in which experts meet at hohenkam-

mer castle, outside of munich, Germany, to dis-cuss themes surrounding social vulnerability,

tipping points and humanitarian crises.Nicole Laliberté (ph.D.) attended the Geographies of Justice Summer institute in manchester, england, from may 18-22 and then was in uganda to do preliminary research sponsored by the africana research center on campus.


GradUate StUdent neWS www.geog.psu.edu

thomas Sigler (ph.D.) spent the past summer interning with the united States agency for international Development (uSaiD) in the Democratic republic of the congo. based in the ituri region in the eastern part of the country, thomas worked on the central african regional program for the environment and in conjunction with the

Wildlife conservation Society. Working in the Okapi faunal reserve, he was able to apply his past experience in central america. the

region has witnessed a dramatic increase in population as a result of the displacement caused by the rwandan and Kivuan

conflicts, and the small grants serve as a means by which to provide more robust livelihood options to those who might

otherwise rely on the rainforest for livelihood activities. this small grants program works in favor of the program's overall objectives

of preserving biodiversity and mitigating forest degradation.

Brent Yarnal was the recipient of two grants: One, through the Pennsylvania Department of Environmen-tal Protection in collaboration with the municipalities around State College, will be used to develop a climate change action plan for the State College area. Doctoral student Peter Howe (M.S. 2009) collected data to inventory the region’s greenhouse gas emissions dur-ing the summer as the first phase of the project. The second grant, through the National Oceanic and Atmo-spheric Administration’s Sector Applications Research Program, will be used to create a web-based tool to help municipalities assess and estimate their vulner-abilities. Peter howe will assist Brent on this project. Brent also was the editor of the book “Sustainable Communities on a Sustainable Planet: The Human-Environment Regional Observatory Project,” which was published in the summer of 2009 by Cambridge University Press.

andrew Pierce (Ph.D.) and shaunna Barnhart (Ph.D.) received NSF Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement grants.

Craig McCabe (M.S.), robert roth (Ph.D.) and kevin ross (M.S.) received third place in the Department of Homeland Security Summit Student Poster Competition for their poster “A near real-time visualization for understanding spatio-temporal patterns of violent crime in the District of Columbia,” which was selected from 74 peer-reviewed posters.

robert roth (Ph.D.) and Jin Chen (Ph.D.) won first place in the AAG Joint Cartography, GIS, and Remote Sensing Specialty Groups Illustrated Poster Competition for their poster “U.S. Cervical Cancer Mortality 2000-2004: New Methods and New Findings.”

shaunna Barnhart (Ph.d.) received a Fulbright Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Grant and will use it to continue her dissertation research in Nepal on com-munity forestry and biogas. Specifi-cally, Shaunna is looking at if and how community forestry groups cause people to think and act in new ways in relation to the environment such that

they would adopt biogas technology. The research she’s conducted to date is in Jhapa district of Nepal. With the Fulbright Hays grant, Shaunna will expand the study to a second site in Gorkha district, which is more economically and environmentally marginalized than Jhapa. She also received a Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellow-ship to study Nepali at Cornell University.

tim Frazier (Ph.D. 2009) accepted an as-sistant professor position in geogra-phy at the University of Idaho.


www.geog.psu.edu FaCULtY and StaFF neWS

GeoGraPhY Grads Go GloBe-trottInG: a look at What theY dId thIs suMMer

Maureen Biermann (m.S. 2009) attended the united Nations university institute for envi-ronment and human Security’s Summer acad-emy on Social vulnerability. it was a weeklong program in which experts meet at hohenkam-

mer castle, outside of munich, Germany, to dis-cuss themes surrounding social vulnerability,

tipping points and humanitarian crises.

Matt Branch (ph.D.) and Shaunna Barn-hart (ph.D.) co-led a service learning group to

visakhapatnam, india, where students spent three weeks volunteering at the hOiNa orphanage that’s

run by penn State alumna Darlene large. matt also co-ran

a women-in-sciences camp in pune, india, to educate high

school girls about cultural perceptions of global climate

change.

andrew Carleton was awarded a three-year NSF grant titled “Spatio-Temporal (4D) Atmospheric Environ-ments of Jet Contrail Outbreaks for Potential Mitigation of Their Climatic Impacts.” The grant will develop strate-gies by which clusters of contrails may be predicted in near-real time (e.g., by airlines, the FAA), so that their impacts on surface temperature can be reduced. This new grant is a collaborative effort of Dr. Carleton with Dr. David Travis of University of Wisconsin-Whitewater and follows up on their previous joint NSF grant that determined the associations between jet contrails and atmospheric condi-tions for different U.S. regions, and the effect of the Sept. 11-14, 2001, airline groundings on surface temperature. A master’s student, armand silva, and an undergraduate Geography major, Matt aghazarian, are working on the grant in Year I (2008-09). In Year II, new master’s student Justin Vanderberg will be RA on the grant.

sarah Miller and denice Wardrop were authors of "Riparian plant communities as predictors of instream condition: a case study in the Upper Penns Creek water-shed, Pennsylvania," which was published in Bartonia, the journal of the Philadelphia Botanical Club in 2009.

Geography professor and Cooperative Wetlands Center Director rob Brooks won the prestigious Penn State Faculty Outreach Award.

alan taylor won the Wilson Award for Excellence in Teaching.

Cindy Brewer’s map “Census Atlas of the United States” won three awards: the American Congress on Surveying and Mapping’s best in show; AAG Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography; and the National Association of Government Commu-nicator’s Blue Pencil Award. Cindy also was named the director of the Peter R. Gould Center for Geography Education and Outreach.

Network specialist Bob hibbert was awarded the 2009 Staff Outstanding Service Award.

alan taylor and derrick lampkin were awarded the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences President’s Funds for Research award.

deryck holdsworth won a College of Earth and Mineral Sciences Faculty Mentoring Award.

Joseph Bishop, david diBiase, Frank hardisty, alex klippel and denice Wardrop won Gladys Snyder Education grants.

todd Bacastow won the G. Montgomery and Marion Mitchell Award for Innovative Teaching.

Undergraduate advisor and alumni relations coordi-nator Jodi Vender received the Penn State Excellence in Advising Award.

Visiting professor Ipsita Chatterjee has left the department to take a tenure-track position at the Univer-sity of Texas-Austin. Good luck, Ipsita! We'll miss you.

Send graduate news to [email protected]

www.geog.psu.edu


www.geog.psu.edu

1970sGeorge nicholson (Ph.D. 1974) died

suddenly Nov. 2, 2008. He had recently retired as associate director, Policy/Implementation after 30 years in the Niagara Region Planning Department. George was an avid cyclist and for the last several years had been instrumen-tal in the development of the Greater Niagara Circle Route, a 147-km cycling and hiking trail. He is survived by his wife, Wynne, of 37 years and two sons, Scott and Tyrone.

Joseph l. scarpaci (M.S. 1978), who was a profes-sor of geography at Virginia Tech and received emeritus status, has joined the faculty at the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington as profes-

sor of marketing in the Department of Economics and Business. He is the recent co-author (with Armando Portela) of Cuban Landscapes: Memory, Place and Culture, published by Guilford Press in July 2009.

1980sthomas W. Potteiger (B.S. 1981) is

working in the C-130J aircraft production program of Lockheed Martin Aeronautics in Marietta, Ga. He’s worked with Aeronauti-cal Digital Map support for U.S., Canadian,

Danish, Norwegian, British, Italian, and Australian military services. Thomas says Penn State professor emeritus Peirce Lewis played a significant role in not only his civilian job but also the 25 years as a U.S. Air Force navigator.

Wayne Brew (B.S. 1981), an assistant professor of geography at Montgomery County Community College in Blue Bell, Pa., has been promoted to president of the Delaware Valley Geographical Association for 2009 and 2010. He also published an article in the spring 2009 issue of the journal Material Culture.

1990sdavid r. rain (M.S. 1993, Ph.D.

1997) has received tenure and promo-

tion to associate professor at George Washington University, and starting in the fall, he will assume directorship of the Environmental Studies program. David says that his children (aka the “rain-drops”) are doing well: Avery will study in Budapest, Hungary, this fall; Lydia will start at Guilford College in North Carolina in the fall; Callen will be in 11th grade; and Jasper in eighth grade.

Bob keach (B.S. 1993) was the lead counsel in the strip-search class action lawsuits in Dauphin County, Pa., and Philadelphia that settled for $2.16 and $5.9 million respectively. Both cases involved the defendants agreeing to stop strip-searches in their local jails for indi-viduals charged with misdemeanors and other minor crimes. Bob also achieved consent decrees stopping strip-searches in Allegheny County, Pa., and Bexar County (San Antonio), Texas.

stephen aichele (B.S. 1995) recently

completed his Ph.D. dissertation in Ge-ography at Michigan State University, investigating the effects of climate and land-use change on watershed hydrology in suburban settings. Steve is starting his 14th year with the U.S. Geological Survey, serving as geospatial liaison to Michigan and the Great Lakes. As a geospatial liaison, Steve manages USGS mapping programs in Michigan and works to build cross-boundary collabora-tions between federal, state and local governments, as well as academic and private sector entities, to make current, reliable geospatial information available to the public, researchers and govern-ment through The National Map and the National Spatial Data Infrastructure. Steve lives in Okemes, Mich., with his wife Tracy, daughter Elizabeth (5) and son Stephen (2).

Brendan Wesdock (B.S. 1995) was recently named a stockholder of Gannett Fleming an international planning, de-

sign, and construction management firm in Newport News, Va. Wesdock serves as the vice president of military solutions for GeoDecisions, a division of Gannett Fleming.

anthony Greulich (B.A. 1996), was promoted in March 2009 to Planner III with the County of Henrico in Virginia. He has worked with the county for about five years and started as a Planner I. In addition,

his daughter Genevieve turned 1 on March 4, 2009.

Phil dennison (B.S. 1997) received tenure and was promoted to associate professor in the Department of Geogra-phy at the University of Utah.

david J. Brown (M.S. 1997) and his wife adopted a baby girl, Elsina, from Ethio-pia in April 2009.

emilie lorditch (B.S. 1998) was se-

lected as a 2009 National Press Founda-tion fellow for the Understanding Violent Weather seminar in Norman, Okla., April 19-22, 2009.

2000sMatthew Johnson (B.S. 2003) works

part-time as a geographic analyst for Navteq in Conshohocken, Pa., while he’s pursuing a master’s in business econom-ics at Lehigh University.

rachel (kurtz) headley (Ph.D. 2003) and her husband, Mike, are the proud parents of a baby girl, Alexandra, who was born Aug. 25, 2008.

The Headleys reside in Spearfish, which is in the Black Hills of South Dakota.

kelly Vanderbrink (B.S. 2004, M.S. 2008) and his family have relocated to northern Virginia where he’s working for Scientific Applications International Corp. as a consultant in the hydrologic and environmental analysis branch of the

Army Corps of Engineers Topographic Center.

rick Murphy (B.S. 2004) has been accepted into Temple University’s Master’s of Community and Regional Planning program.

Jennifer Mapes (M.S. 2005) received her Ph.D. in geography from the University of Southern California, hav-ing completed her dissertation “Urban (r)evolution: Rethinking the American small town.” Her research involved nine months of fieldwork in seven case-study towns in the western U.S. In the dissertation, Jennifer argues that small towns are seeking to overcome urban challenges by (re)creating nostalgic landscapes. She started this academic year as a full-time instructor in USC’s Department of Geography, teaching courses on urban, cultural and environ-mental geography.

dennis dalbey (CPGIS 2005) works as an adjunct teaching two GIS courses in the Geography and Urban Studies Department at Temple University. His full-time job is managing the department of geodemography at Marketing Systems Group in Fort Washington, Pa. His company specializes in target market research, population forecasting, consult-ing, and a variety of other geo-spatial research.

andrew Murdoch (CPGIS 2005) started a new position on June 1, 2009, with TekSystems and SAIC doing GIS programming and software development in Chantilly, Va.

Bronson Goss (B.S. 2006) married Jennifer Marion, a graduate of Indiana University, and the couple resides in Baltimore, Md.

teresa C. lawler (B.S. 2007) served a tour of duty in Iraq. She was a corporal with A-Co 328th – BSB in the 56th Stryker Brigade combat team – Opera-tions section as an S-1 NCOIC.

Christina Cummings (B.S. 2008), a graduate student at the University of North Dakota, worked in the summer with the Fish and Wildlife Service at Devil’s Lake, N.D., doing field work with Trimble GPS Data Unit, GIS work and assisting with environmental education.

aLUmni neWS

david rain's 4 children, aka the "raindrops"

Do you have an update to share with alumni? Send a short announcement to [email protected]


www.geog.psu.edu aLUmni neWS

aluMna ProFIle Air fOrce cOlONel BecOMeS exPerT ON TerrOriSM

security, the Department of Defense recently stood up a new major command, AFRICOM, to address these issues and proactively focus on conflict prevention. These types of organiza-tions, as well as the United Nations and NATO, must continue to engage early and often in failing regions before terrorists and criminal step in and take control. Then it is too late.

Certainly we’ve seen how landforms and features have thwarted military efforts over the years, such as in the dense rainforests of Vietnam or the unpatrolled mountainous region of western Pakistan. The intersection of disciplines such as geography, political and military science is one ripe for further study and exploration. I truly believe that in order to remain the world superpower, our country must learn to harness the brain power of experts in all fields and apply this collective body of knowledge to address our nation’s challenges. There is no one answer or solution to our most vexing threats.

by Jenni (Whitnack) hestermanB.S. 1986

I n 2007, I retired as a colonel in the Air Force. It was a fantastic 21-year career, but with my husband still on active duty and our little girl to take care of, I felt

it was time to transition out and have a more flexible, portable career.

Over the course of my military career, I began self study into the topic of terrorism. I published a small book on the subject while serving a one-year fellowship at a think tank and also spent a great deal of time inter-acting with federal agencies while protecting Andrews Air Force Base, the home of Air Force 1.

After retirement, I immersed myself full time in the sub-ject and began teaching counter-terrorism courses online for the American Military University. The interaction with my students, many of whom who are deployed overseas for combat operations, keeps my research current and relevant.

Teaching led to more self study and learning, and having been a frustrated writer for many years, I started writing a scholarly blog at www.inhomelandescurity.com. The blogging led to a position as a contributing editor and staff writer for a new magazine, The Counter Terrorist, where I’ve published articles on terrorist financing, as well as the intersection between gangs, organized crime and terror. My recent article on Mexican cartels and violence at the southern border was the cover story for the June/July 2009 issue.

I am now on the speaking circuit, providing briefings and training on international and domestic terror threats. My goal is to take strategic level data and analysis and provide actionable information for those doing the heavy lifting: law enforcement at the operational, street level. I feel that if one piece of information or thought I convey might lead to the unraveling of a terrorist cell, or prevent an attack, then all of my efforts are worth-while.

We are beginning to realize how geography and geopolitical situations contribute to the rise of terrorist groups. Countries such as Somalia and now Guinea Bissau on the west coast of Africa are sliding into anarchy, and terrorists and narcotraffickers have stepped into the void to take control. The absence of the rule of law is certainly a factor, but so is a despondent, uneducated, starving populace that sees no hope for the future and no way out. For them, the call of jihad – and dying as a martyr for the cause – is powerful.

Al Shabaab is a radical Islamist terror group in Somalia, which is exacting a percentage of profit reaped through piracy in the Horn of Africa and recruit-ing manpower from Europe and the United States. Although many don’t understand why some of these remote areas directly impact our national security, consider this: At least 20 young men, U.S. citizens of Somali descent, have disappeared from their homes over the last year. One of these men, Minneapolis resident Shirwa Ahmed, re-emerged in Somalia when he conducted a suicide bombing. It is clear that our global environs, and as well as communications advances associated with the Internet, are contributing to the spread of the radical ideology. As you can see, the modern terrorist threat is very difficult to detect, infiltrate and eradicate.

Recognizing the stability of Africa is critical to the region and our national

Jenni hester-man regularly escorted former president George W. Bush onto air

Force 1.

Do you have an update to share with alumni? Send a short announcement to [email protected].

department neWS www.geog.psu.edu

by mike Dawson

D ozens of poor villagers gathered at a com-munity center in their town in southeastern Nepal at the request of Shaunna barnhart, a

penn State graduate student who lives in bellefonte and was in the South asian country in the fall of 2007 working on various community projects.

barnhart called the group together because she wanted to find out what the villagers saw as their most pressing quality-of-life concerns. the villagers were mostly women who come from families that don’t own land, live in bamboo-thatched huts and make only a few dollars a day doing manual labor.

The first five villagers were hesitant to speak of any problems. but the next person spoke up, saying that her household didn’t have a toilet or a good footpath to walk to it.

“it became abundantly clear,” said barnhart, who already had been to Nepal a handful of times since 1998. “after her, everyone was more comfortable telling what they really thought, and everyone agreed that lack of toilets was their biggest problem.”

there was just one problem: the families were too poor to build the high quality sanitary brick and ce-ment outhouses that their wealthier neighbors have, barnhart said. So, she asked the villagers how they could go about getting toilets for their homes and how she could help.

the villagers, barnhart said, didn’t want a handout. instead, they said they could provide labor and collect supplies, such as sand and stone from a nearby river. but they didn’t have the money to pay for a toilet up front and didn’t have collateral to take out a loan.

barnhart decided she’d take on the fund-raising,

and in January 2008, she started the drive. She received dona-tions from her fam-ily, some friends in bellefonte, and a candle fund-raiser. all told, she rounded up $830 – enough for eight toilets, she

said.“i would see if i

could get together the initial funds to start a

micro-loan program,” said barnhart, who’s

a doctoral student in the department of geography

and hopes to graduate in the spring of 2010. “but they would manage the

loan.”She took the money to Nepal

in late 2008, where the people in the village selected a commit-

tee to oversee the loan, and the community set guide-

lines to determine which households would be

the first to receive the money. the

guidelines nar-rowed down

the

households by need, ability to repay the loan and honesty, she said.

“the people who were moved to the front of the line were those working in the river making $5 or $7 a day,” said barnhart, 30, who’s originally from mercersburg, pa.

in all, there will be 30 toilets among 33 house-holds. Some of the families chose to share the cost, and in turn, the toilet, with a neighbor.

Since December 2008, five toilets have been installed, and another six are on the way, “which means people are repaying,” barnhart said.

families on the waiting list can put deposits in a savings account toward their toilet. those waiting are mostly the ones making a $1 or $2 a day, and their deposits may be 20 cents a week, barnhart said. the committee is also planning a fund that will retain money to fix or provide upkeep on the toilets.

between fund-raising and taking the money to Nepal, barnhart’s life took an unexpected turn in late January 2008. She went to donate plasma at biolife in downtown State college when a physical revealed a lump on her neck. Six weeks of tests later and barnhart was diagnosed with cancer — hodgkin’s lymphoma.

but “that cancer thing,” as barnhart calls it, didn’t get the best of her. it did postpone a trip to Nepal she had planned in february 2008, but the time off gave her time to raise some of the $830 for the toilets, as well as a time to apply for grant money toward her doctoral thesis and research in Nepal.

the result was two awards: a fulbright hays grant and a National Science foundation grant. the grants will fund up to nine months of expenses to continue her dissertation research in Nepal.

after barnhart graduates, she plans to get a job as a professor. at the same time, she wants to

take the micro-loan idea to other parts of Nepal to fund additional community-improvement efforts, particularly sanitary projects.

and it’s that type of project that barnhart said has given her a dif-ferent look at herself and life.

“i don’t stress about things like i did before the Nepal-can-

cer experience,” barnhart said. “If I don’t finish all the things on my list,

it’s OK. at the end of the day, i have a roof over my head and

indoor plumbing.”

Cartography by erin Greb

Grad student’s work brings toilets to village in nepal



FaCultY ProFIle: BrIan kInG

along the boteti river in botswana. Water has returned after several dry years and is prompting livelihood adjustments, including new forms of agricultural production and livestock grazing. Our work is evaluating how the variability associated with the flooding regimes prompts social responses and what this says about future variability driven by climate change.

I am a human geographer who concentrates upon nature-society interactions, development, and hu-man health. My regional focus is Southern Africa,

and I have conducted field research in South Africa since 1999. My doctoral research utilized a case study of the Mahushe Shongwe Game Reserve to assess the livelihood impacts of community conservation and shift-ing systems of environmental governance in the former KaNgwane homeland in northeast South Africa. This research evaluated how Mahushe Shongwe impacts household access to environmental resources, how households combine a variety of assets to produce live-lihoods, and how the democratic transition is impacting the institutions that govern patterns of resource access. It was designed to contribute to research and policy on participatory conservation models that work to include local populations in natural resource management.

This work demonstrates that there is measurable community variation in the perceptions and benefits arising from community conservation initiatives. Rural households within South Africa engage with a diversity of livelihood strategies, including natural resource col-lection and engagement with formal and informal econo-mies. These diverse livelihood systems are important in shaping how Mzinti residents perceive of conservation

and development interventions such as Mahushe Shon-gwe. My research helps demonstrate that communities need to be socially and spatially disaggregated in order to appreciate the impacts of community conservation.

This region is undergoing dramatic changes that remain tied to historical geographies and contesta-tions over space, governance and development in the post-apartheid era. A second theme of my work is an examination of how space and the construction of borders have been utilized by national governments to justify racial classification and spatial segregation. As one example of this, the apartheid construction of the bantustans was designed to manage African populations by linking them to specific locations and cultural institu-tions. Following the 1994 democratic elections, state agencies have reframed apartheid geographies through development discourses that structure the emerging op-portunities available to local populations and economies.

Although my research has concentrated upon South Africa, my interest in these themes extends to other areas. I am currently working with Kelley Crews and Ken Young (both at the University of Texas) to

assess the social and ecological dynamics associated with seasonal flooding in the Okavango Delta. The environmental uncertainty in terms of the location and intensity of the flooding has significant implications for human populations dependent upon various resources for livelihood production. We are presently collaborating with local researchers on data collection and analysis and have submitted a research proposal to the National Science Foundation to extend this work into 2010.

Lastly, I am working to evaluate the relationships between health and environmental change in the developing world. Building upon preliminary data col-lection on disease and demographic patterns in 2001, I am currently evaluating the impacts of HIV/AIDS within northeast South Africa. This research is demonstrating that livelihood patterns and environmental systems are experiencing transformations in response to the onset of disease within rural households. Understanding the par-ticular trajectories of these patterns is critical to ensure effective disease management and support environ-mentally sustainable practices. My recently published paper in Progress in Human Geography argues that the geographic subfield of political ecology has specific contributions to make towards understanding the social and ecological dimensions of human health.

Dr. King working on various projects in South Africa

Contact dr. king at [email protected]

www.geog.psu.edu department neWS



The Penn State chapter of Supporting Women in Ge-ography was awarded the Janice Monk Service Award from the Geographic Perspectives on Women specialty group of the AAG, the first time an organization has received the award.

Individual pre-tenure faculty members who have shown outstanding service in the area of advancing roles of women in geography are typically the recipients of the award. The nomination of SWiG came from two founding members of the Penn State chapter, amy trauger (M.S. 2001, Ph.D. 2005) and Jennifer fluri (M.S. 2001, Ph.D. 2005).

“GPOW is very pleased to recognize your stellar contributions to building new and strengthening exist-ing roles for women in Geography, which in turn has enhanced the study of geography from gendered and feminist perspectives,” said GPOW awards committee representative Pratyusha Basu.

Penn State’s SWiG chapter was chartered during the 2000-2001 academic year, and its mission has been to promote the participation of women in the discipline of geography and to empower women who are pursuing academic and professional careers in geography. It has both service and advocacy functions.

“From day one, the group was committed to fostering the role of women not only within geography but within our department and at the University,” said Lorraine Dowler, a professor in the geography and women’s studies departments at Penn State. “I am simply astounded with what they have accomplished and so happy to see that the group has now crossed several generations of students in the department.”

Melissa W. Wright, a faculty mem-ber in the Geography and Women’s Studies departments, said this award shows the esteem that SWiG carries across the field of geography. But it’s not the only award SWiG has received.

“It is important to realize that the Jan Monk award is the second

received by SWiG in the last two years,” Wright said. “In 2008, SWiG received the Penn State Outstanding Student Organization of the Year Award for its commitment to the uni-versity mission, educational outreach and community building. These two awards demonstrate the excellent work performed by the organization within the university and within the discipline.”

That work has led SWiG to play an active role in the Department of Geography. The group hosts the annual Supporting Young Women in Geography Day, in which middle school students spend a day in the department with SWiG members. The goal is to spark enthusiasm and intellectual curiosity in those students.

SWiG also has sponsored lunches with several Cof-fee Hour speakers, who discuss their experiences as women in the field of geography, as well as within the academic field more generally. The lunches have turned into a community event, as well.

In addition, SWiG had a special session on women in geography in the academic world during the

department’s annual graduate student conference, no)Boundaries, in February. Jan Monk, the namesake of the award, was the keynote speaker.

Under the advocacy umbrella, SWiG drafted a new child policy for female and male graduate students who want to have children and remain in school.

“The organization’s commitment to changing the parental leave policy for graduate students had a ripple effect on our campus,” Wright said, because the pro-posal made its way to the university level where it was set in place in spring 2008.

Among other activities or functions that SWiG conducts include professional development seminars and workshops, working with the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences' Office of Educational Equity to network with other women’s organizations on campus, maintaining a network link with women’s organizations at the department, college, university, and discipline level; organizing two panel sessions at the Association of American Geographers annual meeting; and fund-raising to offset some of the travel costs for members attending the AAG meeting.

Dowler said there was a bit of opposition to SWiG when it first was organized.

“But through the support of the department head at the time, Roger Downs, and later Karl Zimmerer, the group has made a real impact on the department and the wider discipline,” Dowler said.

SWiG was honored during the AAG Awards luncheon on March 27 during the annual meeting in Las Vegas. The group was honored at the department level during the annual Geography Recognition Reception on May 6.


Penn State SWIG honored with Monk Service Award

Geography professor Lucky Yapa takes some time to talk to stu-dents from mount nittany middle School on SWiG’s Supporting Young Women in Geography day during the fall semester of 2008.

dowler

Wright


P enn State will be a hotbed of climate change discussion in September when the university hosts a three-day seminar that will feature leading experts on global warming research. The event will consist of a half-day seminar, several panel sessions, lectures and networking events from Wednesday, Sept. 16, to Friday, Sept. 18. It will be co-

hosted by the Graduates of Earth and Mineral Sciences alumni society, or GEMS, and the Department of Geography. Brent Yarnal, the coordinator of the seminar and a professor of geography at Penn State, said the event’s partici-

pants mostly include Penn State geography faculty and alumni who are experts in the field.“We want people to appreciate many of the dimensions of climate change, and almost as important, that Penn State

Geography contributes to most dimensions of climate change research,” he said.

Department hosts climate change conference GeMS Seminar schedule

Wednesday, sept. 16Miller Lecture: 7 p.m. 112 Walker Andrew comrie, “catching climate fever: Diagnosing the changing environment”

thursday, sept. 17Panel I: “Causes and Mitigation of Climate Change”; 1-2:30 p.m. in the HUB Auditorium panelists u christopher Steuer, icf international u Andrew Denny, ePA u Andrew carleton, Penn State u Petra Tschakert, Penn State moderator u Brandi robinson, environmental credit corp.

Panel II: “Impacts and Adaptation to Climate Change; 2:45-4:30 p.m. in the HUB Auditorium” participants u Andrew comrie u rob crane u Greg Knight u larry Kalkstein u robin leichenko u Bill Solecki moderator u robin Shudak

Reception, 5-7 p.m. eMS Museum

Friday, Sept. 18Coffee Hour, 4 p.m. 112 Walker larry Kalkstein, “Human health, extreme weather events, and climate change: How uncertain is the future?”

All the events can be viewed online. See the links in the box on the left, or go to www.geog.psu.edu/gems for the links.


The highlight of the three-day event will be two panel ses-sions on climate change at the GEMS-sponsored seminar, “Geographies of Climate Change: Causes, Consequences and Policy,” from 1 to 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 17, in the Hetzel Union Building Auditorium.

“The purpose of the GEMS Seminar Series is to showcase the individual departments within the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences and promote general awareness of the unique disciplines found within the college,” said Colleen Swetland, the director of alumni relations for the college.

The symposium is a tool to recruit students and provide op-tions to those students thinking of changing majors, as well as provide networking and interaction among alumni, profession-als, faculty and students, Swetland said.

It also shows the importance of the business aspect of the discipline to society, she said.

The first panel session will be on “Causes and Mitigation of Climate Change,” from 1 to 3 p.m. Two of the discussants are alumni of the department’s graduate program. Christopher steuer (M.S. 2004), who works for the environmental consulting firm ICF International, is one of the leading authorities on green-house gas emissions and has compiled the inventory of national greenhouse emissions and sinks. andrea denny (M.S. 1999), of the Environmental Protection Agency, specializes in state and local mitigation and planning.

The remaining participants are geography faculty andrew Car-leton and Petra tschakert. Carleton is well-known for his work on jet contrails and their effect on global warming, and Tschakert has studied carbon storage in developing countries through agriculture techniques. The moderator is Brandi robinson (M.S. 2005), an alumna who works for Environmental Credit Corp., which creates environmental assets from greenhouse gas reduction projects.

“Penn State geographers are at the forefront of research on documenting the human contributions to climate change and on developing ways to reduce those contributions,” Yarnal said. “The aim of this panel is to raise people’s awareness of Penn State’s influence on this field.”

The second panel, “Impacts and Adaptation to Climate Change,” 3 to 5 p.m., features two alumni, andrew Comrie (Ph.D. 1992) and robin leichenko (Ph.D. 1997); faculty members rob Crane and Greg knight; and friends of the department larry kalkstein and Bill solecki.

Comrie wears three hats at the University of Arizona: professor of Geography, Dean of the Graduate College, and Associate Vice President for Research. Comrie’s expertise includes synoptic climatology, urban and regional air pollution, climate variability and change, and climate and health. Leichenko is an associate professor of Geography at Rutgers University whose research interests include urban and regional impacts of global economic and climate change in advanced and developing countries.

Crane’s expertise is in synoptic climatology, regional climate change and climate downscaling, polar climates and sea ice-atmo-

sphere interactions. Knight’s expertise focuses on climate change impacts on Eastern Europe and water resources. Kalkstein is a research professor who runs the Synoptic Climatology Laboratory at the University of Miami, and is known for developing implement-ing heat/health watch-warning systems in major cities worldwide. Solecki, a professor of geography at CUNY’s Hunter College, is a noted expert on environmental change in major cities and has written reports on climate impacts on such cities as New York and Shanghai. The moderator of the second panel is robin shudak (M.S. 2000), an alumna of the department, who had handled com-munications for the EPA’s Energy Star Program before she started the video production company CatzEye Studio.

“Geographers are leaders in the field of climate change impacts, vulnerability, and adaptation,” Yarnal said. “This distin-guished panel highlights some of that research.”

Both panel sessions are open to the public and will feature individual presentations by the speakers and a question-and-answer period.

In addition, the event will include two lectures. The first one will be held on Sept. 16 and features Comrie as part of the ge-ography department’s e. Willard Miller distinguished speaker series. His talk is titled “Catching climate fever: Diagnosing the changing environment of infectious disease,” and the time and location will be announced later. The second lecture, for the geography department’s Coffee hour speaker series, will fea-ture Kalkstein at 4 p.m. Sept. 17 in 112 Walker. The talk is titled “Human health, extreme weather events, and climate change: How uncertain is the future?”

Three networking events round out the event. A reception will follow the panel sessions from 5 to 7 p.m. Sept. 17 in the EMS Museum on the ground floor of the Deike Building. Supporting Women in Geography (SWIG), a service and advocacy organiza-tion in the geography department, will sponsor two luncheons. The first, “Women in climate change science – academia” on Sept. 16, will feature Leichenko. The second, “Women in climate change science – industry and government” on Sept. 18, will be a panel session composed of Denny, Robinson, and Shudak.

Watch the GeMs seminar panels online: Panel I is at www.tinyurl.com/gemsseminar1

Panel II is at www.tinyurl.com/gemsseminar2

see www.geog.psu.edu/gems

for more information.

www.geog.psu.edu

Explore bird and marine diversity of the Mkumbati Nature Reserve. Study the ef-fects of fire in grasslands and forests at the Cwebe and Dwesa nature reserves. See elephants at the Addo Elephant Park. Play in Cape Town. Or, research your own topic through independent study.

They’re all possible through the new 10-week, 15-credit Parks and People study abroad program in South Africa, which is being piloted by AESEDA and the Depart-ment of Geography. AESEDA Director Rob Crane, who is also on the geography faculty, spearheaded the efforts on campus to implement the program that will begin with about 12 students in the spring 2010 semester.

The program will begin with an orientation in Cape Town, and from there, students and faculty will drive to the east-

ern part of the country to the Cwebe and Dwesa nature reserves, where the majority of the program will take place. Students will take classes and conduct research and service projects in the parks and surround-ing areas.

Geography faculty Brian King, Erica Smithwick and Petra Tschakert each will teach a three-credit, three-week course. Six additional research credits will be avail-able. AESEDA faculty member Neil Brown will be the coordinator of the program, and geography doctoral student Nicole Lalib-erté will be the teaching assistant.

The program is interdisciplinary in na-ture, and research topics will be limitless as the three faculty members bring different research expertise to the program. King’s research is in political history of landscape, while Smithwick is interested in the effects

of fire on landscape. Tschakert’s research looks at climate change and adaptations.

In future years, the faculty who teach for the program may come from other depart-ments at Penn State, such as landscape architecture or biology.

“Interdisciplinary research is the only way to answer the problems of the park,” says Smithwick, who pitched to Crane the idea of a doing research in a park.

Crane, who has contacts and previous experience in South Africa, traveled there in May 2009 with Smithwick, Brown, King and five students to pilot the program. Among the students was allison hurley (B.S. 2009), a senior geography major, who studied soil erosion on the trip and then worked in Smithwick’s Landscape Ecology at Penn State (LEAPS) lab during the summer of 2009.

Parks and PeoPle: a neW eduCatIon aBroad ProGraM

nicole lalibertéGeography grad student,

On-site teaching assisitant with students

in South Africa

Brian kingGeography faculty,

Instructor of one of the three-week courses

in South Africa

erica smithwickGeography faculty,


in South Africa

Petra tschakertGeography faculty,


in South Africa

neil BrownAESEDA faculty,On-site program

liaison with students in South Africa

FaCultY PartICIPatIon


Students will arrive in Cape Town for their primer on South African history and culture.

Big game awaits students at the Addo Elephant National Park.

Students will stay at The Haven at Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve and take trips to the Mkambati reserve to the northeast.



department neWS

Q: After you graduate, you’ll head to Lassen Volcanic National Park to do research with graduate student Andrew Pierce. What do you plan to do after that?

a: my post graduation plans include taking a much needed break from school to narrow my research interests while applying to appropri-ate graduate programs. it is my intent to obtain a doctoral degree and complete research at the professional level.

Parks and PeoPle: student Q&arecent graduate Allison Hurley (B.S. 2009) talks about her involvement as one of the students who participated on the pilot program of Parks and People in May 2009.

Question: Allison, you’re a geography major with a double option in GIS and physi-cal/environmental, and you also have a geosciences minor. What’s become your main research interest as you graduate from Penn State?

answer: throughout my four years at penn State, i focused primarily on cryosphere research. however, after completing courses in geomorphology and landscape ecology, i developed an interest in soils and wanted to learn more to see if it was an area i wanted to pursue in graduate school.

Q: You were one of the students who piloted the Department of Geography’s and AESEDA’s new Parks and People education abroad program in South Africa in May. What about the program caught your attention, and how did you apply your research interest in soils while you were there?

a: Well, the number-one aspect of the trip was that it was to South africa, which i felt was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. i was most interested in broadening my research experience and simply learning about another way of life — to me the trip was an escape from my current research. each stu-dent decided upon a research topic of their choice, relevant to South africa, and was required to do a literature review and give a presentation on their findings. Due to my interest in soils, I chose to investigate erosion problems in South africa. While visiting Dwesa-cwebe our class also got to participate in the collection of soil samples, and this was pretty exciting for me.

Q: What advice do you give to the students going in January?a: first i would encourage the students to learn as much as they

can about the geology, climate, political history, cultures, and cur-rent events of South africa as this will only make the experience more meaningful. much of this background information was discussed in class during the spring semester prior to the trip and it allowed me to better appreciate much of what i saw when traveling in South africa. During the two weeks spent in the country our group had many discus-sions with students from university of cape town, and having some background knowledge will help in having meaningful conversations. Second, roads in the rural areas where we traveled were unpaved, wind-ing and extremely bumpy so if you get car sick, or even if you normally don’t, be sure to pack some Dramamine (just in case). lastly, even if you’ve travelled abroad previously, be prepared for a totally different abroad experience, keep an open mind, and keep your windows closed. We found this out the hard way at mkumbati as we acquired some hungry, unwanted monkey friends!

Q: You spent two weeks for the pilot program, and the next group of students will have 10 weeks. The experiences surely will be different, but if you had to do it over again, what would you do differently?

A: This is difficult to answer since I had such a great experience, but I suppose if i could change one thing it would be that the trip was longer so that the students could complete research projects of our own. So i guess i am a little jealous i am graduating!

www.geog.psu.edu


department neWS

Q: The program will take students to Cape Town, Robben Island, Mkumbati Nature Reserve and Addo Elephant National Park, in addition to the time they’ll spend at Dwesa-Cwebe. What are some memories you have from those places that characterize the time you were there?

a: Our trip started off in cape town, which i am pretty sure was a shock to ev-eryone; it was like walking downtown in any european city. While we were there, we toured robben island, which i think was a great way to begin the trip consider-ing the island’s historical importance. We spent one day at both mkumbati and addo. mkumbati was pretty desolate compared to Dwesa-cwebe and addo, and we didn’t see any other people during our visit. this turned out to be a good thing as the group got to experience the most amazing star-filled sky anyone had ever seen. So far removed from the city lights, we could see the stars touch the curved horizon, as if about to dip into the indian Ocean. addo, of course, was highly anticipated by the entire group and certainly lived up to our expectations, and we saw a variety of wildlife. everything about our visit here was amazing from the bed and breakfast, to the tour, to the pictures we captured. Not to mention that by the end every girl had fallen in love with a baby elephant (maybe the guys, too, they just won’t admit it).

Q: The place where you stayed is called “The Haven,” and it was on the Dwesa-Cwebe Nature Reserve, far from an urban center. What was the experience like living in the nature reserve and interacting with the people who live in the community around it?

a: the poverty seen in the majority of the communities around the parks and reserves that we visited was unlike anything i had ever seen before. most residents had no electricity in their huts, people walked the roads in bare feet and trash was prevalent, seen caught in chicken-wire fencing. in no way was this pleasant to see, but it was important that it was seen and i was grateful that we got to interact with some members of these communities. the haven’s employees consisted of members of the local community and they were more than willing to teach us a few words in their local dialect. they seemed to enjoy watching several of us as we struggled to master the tongue-clicking technique that some of their words contained. One day, our group had the opportunity to meet with the community’s chief and we were even invited into his hut. for me, the most memorable part of the trip was talking to a teenage girl at a gas station. She had come up behind me and tapped my shoulder and tried to talk to me. i couldn’t understand her. through hand gestures and some broken english, she taught me enough to interact with the lady behind the cash register and tell her to have a nice day. i’ll never forget the girl’s smile and what she taught me.

nicole lalibertéGeography grad student,

On-site teaching assisitant with students

in South Africa

Brian kingGeography faculty,


in South Africa

erica smithwickGeography faculty,


in South Africa

Petra tschakertGeography faculty,


in South Africa

neil BrownAESEDA faculty,On-site program

liaison with students in South Africa


The first class of the geospatial intelligence certificate program offered through the John A. Dutton e-Education Institute and Penn State’s World Campus graduated in the spring of 2009.

This program, which is the first of its kind in the country, is helping to meet the high demand for trained geospatial intelligence professionals. todd bacastow (M.S. 1983, Ph.D. 1992) , the lead faculty member for the program, said geospatial graduates can apply the new skills and information gathered from the classes to careers in the defense, intelligence, meteorological and health industries.

“There is a consensus among many within the geo-spatial industry that the supply of qualified workers does not meet the demand of the quickly growing geospatial enterprise in the areas of national security, law enforce-ment and business,” Bacastow said. “The U.S. Depart-ment of Labor identified geospatial technologies as one of 12 ‘high-growth’ industries.”

The 14-credit online certificate program is designed to

improve skills in geospatial technology, spatial thinking and information literacy.

Geospatial intelligence is information and insights that decision-makers rely on to plan for emergencies, to co-ordinate responses to natural and human-induced disas-ters, to manage natural and cultural resources, to enforce the law and to improve national security activities.

Bruce Williams, of Cary, N.C., is a geospatial certificate student who is scheduled to earn his certificate. He said the lessons he learned in his class will enhance his career.

“I plan to combine and leverage my 20 years of information technology sales and marketing expertise with the knowledge and skills gained in this area of study, to enhance my career potential and transition into the geospatial technology market in a customer facing role,” Williams said.

The program is designed so that credits earned in this certificate program may be applied toward the master’s degree in GIS, if a student is granted admission into the master’s program.

Online geospatial intelligence program graduates first class

Geospatial intelligence program2nd quarter 2009Bryan GoltryKaeley JendzejecJason MayerKevin StofanBruce WilliamsShawna Wolin

Shelia AdamsSusan AndersonBrian BeardsleyJohn BeranLisa BlankJody BrostromPatric BrownLuis CubillosLane EyestoneJason GannonJacob GillyMelvin HigginsAngela HillSylvan HillNoah HuntingtonRachael HusonThomas IngoldCarl JaynesGloria JonesKevin KeeleySean KellyJohn KroniczAndrew KuderAndra LimbaughRandy Long

Anuj ManandharHiroyuk MatsudaPhilip McGrathNicholas McKennyDavid MichailofJeffrey MurphyBrian O’SullivanSteven OttoMinh PhamBrian PlanzHarold Rogers IIIRichard RothGeoffrey SchwitzgebelBruce ShawRonald Shumaker Jr.Kelly SinghMartha SnyderwineGeorge SprehnDavid SternerLawrence SvienDianna TargettKeith ThomasCharles ThompsonRyan Young

From left, eric Wolvovsky, Chris Goranson, Sterling Quinn, Karen Schuckman and doug Sheldon are among the graduates of the master’s in GiS program for the second quarter of 2009. they were photographer after commencement in the Bryce Jordan Center in may.

Grads of certificate, Master’s programs in GIS announced

certificate prOGram iN GiS 1St quarter 2009

maSter’S iN GiS2ND quarter 2009

Robert CoxCraig EisslerChristopher GoransonJon JonesMitchell KoyleJoseph Ludwig

Dennis OberlieAndrew ParkerRobert PliszkaSterling QuinnKimberly RohrsKaren Schuckman

Jason SetzerDouglas SheldonAlexander SmithCarrie SpeharGeney TerryEric Wolvovsky

John a. dUtton e-edUCation inStitUte neWS www.geog.psu.edu

To find out more about the online Geospatial programs, check out the new URL, www.pennstategis.com.


Google Earth. Google Maps. GPS. They help people under-stand where they are or where

they need to get to, but people often are unaware of where that data came from, says Karen Schuckman (MGIS 2009), a senior lecturer in geography who’s had 20-plus years of experience in the geospatial and remote sensing industry.

Now, Schuckman and the American Society of Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing hope to change that. Through WPSU, they’ve launched the Geospatial Revolution Project, which they hope will increase the awareness of their work and attract young people to jobs in which they can create that data.

“Geospatial data infrastructure is something people take for granted,” says Schuckman, who’s an instructor in the John A. Dutton e-Education's Master of Geographic Information Science program serving and who's the faculty liaison for the project. “We’re hoping to educate people about that.”

Job growth potential is booming, too, she says.

“There are many who use the data, but there’s a need for people to create the data,” Schuckman says. The demand for outstrips the supply.”

The outreach campaign through WPSU will consist of eight episodes that will be released one by one on the Internet and show national and international geospatial stories. Parts of the Web episodes will be used to make a 60- to 90-minute documentary that will air on WPSU. It’s also a part of Penn

MGIs instructor leading Geospatial revolution project

Karen Schuckman is seen next to a photo of her at the penn State all Sports museum at Beaver Stadium. Schuckman, a gymnast at penn State in the 1970s, is now a senior lecturer in the department of Geography and involved in the Geospatial revolution project with WpSU.

e-mail Schuckman at [email protected].

State Outreach, and the campaign will be geared toward creating companion educational projects.

Schuckman, who developed and teaches the online remote sensing class as part of the John A. Dutton e-Educa-tion Institute’s certificate program in geospatial intelligence, says the project

started when she was past-president of the ASPRS. The society wanted to pro-mote its cause for its 75th anniversary, so Schuckman approached WPSU’s creative director, Tom Keiter Yourchak. ASPRS granted WPSU startup money to produce a trailer for the documentary, which was shown for the first time at the

ASPRS conference in March 2009 in Nashville, Tenn.

“It generated a surprising number of responses in the community,” Schuck-man says. “Now we’re using that momentum to raise the funds needed to finish the project.”

The project is in its infancy, and the hope is to have it completed in 2011. For more information on the project and to view the trailer, visit www.geospatialrevo-lution.psu.edu.

Before coming to Penn State, Schuck-man had worked at URS Corp., Fugro Earth Data and the U.S. Geological Survey. At URS Corp., she was on a team that designed damage assess-ments in Louisiana and Mississippi from hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma using remote sensing and GIS technology. At Fugro Earth Data, she led a number of federal, state, and local government mapping projects, most notably lidar data acquisition to support the North Carolina Floodplain Mapping Program. She is a co-author of two National Research Council reports on the use of terrain data for floodplain mapping.

Before her professional experience, Schuckman was a national champion gymnast at Penn State in 1974 and 1975, graduating with degrees in liberal arts (B.A. 1977) and meteorology (B.S. 1979). She received her Master of Geographic Information Systems in May 2009 and is pictured in the photo on page 14.

Krzysztof Janowicz will join the Department of Geography as an assistant professor of GIS. Janowicz may be seen around the halls of the Walker Building starting in December.

Before joining the Department of Geography at the Penn State, Janowicz worked as post-doctoral re-searcher in an international research training group on semantic integration of geospatial information at the Institute for Geoinformatics, University of Muenster, Germany. He earned a diploma in Landscape Ecology from the University of Muenster (2003) and holds a Ph.D. in Geoinformatics from the Institute for Geoinfor-matics, University of Muenster (2008).

His dissertation was about semantic similarity mea-sures between geographic feature types represented in expressive description logics (supervised by Wer-ner Kuhn and Martin Raubal). In his diploma thesis

he investigated the composition and interoperation of semantic-enabled web services. He started to work as a student assistant at the Institute for Geoinformat-ics in 1999 and worked as a research associate since 2003.

During his studies, Janowicz worked as a network administrator, software developer and network security consultant within various companies, as an indepen-dent contractor, as well as within his own company called JKSolutions.

In 2001, he published a book about Internet security at O’Reilly Press with a revised second edition in 2005 and third in 2007. Janowicz has authored, co-au-thored, and edited about 40 articles in journals, books, conference and workshop proceedings, as well as technical reports relating to GIScience, computer sci-ence, and cognitive science. His research interests are

in semantic interoper-ability, formal ontology, semantic similarity, anal-ogy, context awareness, sensor web, spatial cognition as well as situ-ated and role-based cat-egories. He organized a workshop on “Semantic Similarity Measurement and Geospatial Applica-tions” held in conjunction

with COSIT 2007, was one of the organizers of the Workshop on the Potential of Cognitive Semantics for Ontologies at FOIS 2004, and is program co-chair of the Third International Conference on Geospatial Semantics (GeoS 2009).

Janowicz's teaching activities focus on formal modeling as well as software development.

FaCultY neWs: Meet GiS professor Krzysztof Janowicz


The Pennsylvania State UniversityDepartment of Geography302 Walker BuildingUniversity Park, PA 16802-5011

mr. bruce m. balmat mrs. ruth balmatDr. cynthia brewer Dr. robert p. brooks mrs. rebecca brooksDr. heejun chang mr. David Dibiase mr. Kenneth G. Dugan, Jr. mrs. regina DuganDr. rodney a. erickson mrs. Shari l. ericksonDr. and mrs. Joseph W. Glass mr. maury h. hendler Jr. mr. terry l. hessmr. mark e. Kissel cDr and mrs. robert W. Kraft ms. Sheryl Kron rhodes mr. and mrs. James l. Kwolek

mr. anthony l. mchugh mr. Keith millerms. carrie a. muenksmr. bret W. rodgers mrs. Denise G. rodgersms. Kristen l. Saacke-blunk mr. ronald lee Sipe mrs. Debra vincer SipeDr. Joel Sobel Dr. phyllis totten Sobelmr. raymond J. Stolinas, Jr. mrs. helen Stolinasmrs. marguerite Suarez Dunn Dr. and mrs. Dennis a. trout mr. and mrs. thomas e. Will Dr. brenton m. yarnal Dr. careen yarnal

We are ... GrateFul For Your suPPort!We extend our deepest gratitude to all alumni and friends who have

given financial support to the Department during the past six decades. Without these generous contributions, many scholarships, research experiences, and awards would not be available to our students and faculty. We especially wish to recognize those who contributed to the department between January 1 and June 30, 2009. Their names are listed below.

If you would like to donate, please use the envelope that is stapled into the centerfold of this newsletter. Remember to choose the fund to which you wish to donate. For more information, please contact [email protected] or [email protected].

Nancy pazmiño (b.S. 2009)

Documents

Penn State Department of Geography Summer/Fall 2009 Newsletter