Undergraduate Bulletin > Geography
Department of Geography
College of Arts & Sciences
129 Graham Building
336/334-5388
www.uncg.edu/geo
Faculty
Jeffrey Patton, Professor and Head of Department
Professors Bennett, Debbage, Knapp, Walcott
Associate Professors Bunch, Lewis, Liu, E. Nelson, Royall, Stine, Sultana
Assistant Professors Johnson, Lennartson
Lecturer/Spatial Analysis Lab Director, J. Nelson
Lecturer/Physical Geography-Geology Lab Director, Hall-Brown
Mission Statement
The Department of Geography is a student-centered department having a three-fold integrated mission encompassing teaching, scholarship, and service. The Department offers a program presenting an integrative perspective on the relations among social, political, economic, and physical phenomena occurring across space. The Department is committed to teaching the concepts and research methods of the discipline in order to prepare geography majors for professional careers and/or advanced study. Non-geography majors are presented the geographic knowledge needed to understand the nature of the human and environmental patterns found in the world around them. Graduate student education is focused on preparing our students for advanced professional careers and/or further graduate study. The Department is committed to excellence in both theoretical and applied research. Undergraduate and graduate students involvement in research is encouraged to develop student understanding, reasoning, and technical skills. Through scholarship, teaching, and service, the Department of Geography is dedicated to bettering our community, nation, and planet.
The Department of Geography offers a program which has three principal objectives: to promote the understanding of the locational dimensions of human behavior in their environmental context; to offer a curriculum where geographic concepts and methods are applied to understanding economic, environmental, and social problems at the urban and regional scale; and to promote international understanding through area studies. Thus, the purposes of the program are to contribute an important dimension to the university student’s liberal education and to provide practical training in important contemporary areas of concern as well as the background appropriate for certain vocations.
Graduating majors of the department have found careers in business and industry, in urban and regional planning agencies, in departments of federal and state governments, and in teaching. Job titles include city or regional planner, cartographer, demographer, resource analyst, land or economic developer, location analyst, and teacher. Many graduates find that an undergraduate degree in geography is an excellent foundation for advanced graduate work or professional training in planning, business or law.
Special facilities of the department include fully equipped laboratories in computer cartography, geographic information systems, remote sensing, and physical geography, plus a 130-acre field camp for both instruction and research.
