Guest Speaker in Planning

Regional transportation expert Steve Smith of SRPEDD will be a special guest in Dr. Amey's planning class on Thursday, April 4, meeting at 2:00 in room 277. Contact Dr. Amey with any questions.

Feet Across America

Photo: Jeffrey Pickette

If you have not seen as much of Dr. Domingo this fortnight as you expected, it may be that he has been busy with the North America flat map from National Geographic. Most members and friends of our department know about our ongoing Project EarthView, which has been a permanent part of our geography outreach for the past four years or so.

Equally important is the use of National Geographic's flat-map series, which we use for two weeks each year, in cooperation with the Southeast Massachusetts Geography Network (SEMAGNET), an affiliate of the Massachusetts Geographic Alliance. Each map represents one continent in the familiar style used in the magazine, though at a much greater scale. Traveling with the maps are boxes of activities using cones and other materials to bring students onto the maps.

As described in a recent article in the Stoughton Patch, this builds enthusiasm for geography among students and in the broader community. Because each school can keep the map for a couple of days, students can apply that enthusiasm to in-depth learning activities, so that the result is a deeper connection to geography.

If National Geographic would sell these maps, we would seek funding for a full set, and we are pretty certain we would receive it. So far, however, they are only for rent on a very occasional basis. If this ever changes, you can be sure you will be seeing even more of our department in regional news sources. More importantly, students will be seeing more geography in their schools!

SRPEDD Position

The Geography Department has been asked to share a job announcement with recent and upcoming graduates.

The Transportation Planning Technician (TPT) is a full-time employed entry level position at the Southeastern Regional Planning and Economic Development District (SRPEDD) in Taunton, supervised by the Transportation Planning Manager, Director of Highway Planning or the Director of Transit Planning.

We have posted the full announcement on the department's Facebook page.

Class of '42 Geography Lecture -- Jeff Anzevino

Wednesday, November 28 at 3:00 PM
Conant Science & Math Lecture Hall (Room 120)

Photo of Geographer Extraordinaire Jeff Anzevino taken by
Dr. Hayes-Bohanan on Jeff's boat this summer. The famous Good Ship Clearwater
is in the background, with the Walkway Over the Hudson beyond.
Read about that visit on Environmental Geography.

A Geographer’s Perspective on
 Revitalizing Hudson Riverfronts

Jeff Anzevino, Scenic Hudson & Marist College

Jeff Anzevino will speak about his role as a geographer and planner in helping to connect the wildly successful Walkway Over the Hudson State Historic Park (www.walkway.org) with the struggling communities of Poughkeepsie and Highland.

In his role as Director of Land Use Advocacy for Scenic Hudson (www.scenichudson.org), Jeff coordinates initiatives brand Poughkeepsie and Highland in association with Walkway Over the Hudson. He was been a long-time proponent of the adaptive reuse of the abandoned 1888 Poughkeepsie Railroad Bridge into the recently opened park that will eventually connect dozens of miles of rail trails across Ulster and Dutchess Counties and will eventually reach New York City.

At 1.28 miles long and soaring 212 feet above the Hudson River, Walkway is one of the highest and longest pedestrian bridges in the world. Jeff will describe how a diverse group of business and environmental organizations have come together to promote Walkway as a catalyst for more livable communities and economic opportunity on either side of the bridge.

Walkway Over the Hudson is at the nexus of an emerging network of trails that connect people to and along the Hudson River.  Establishing these types of connections is one of the strategies recommended in Revitalizing Hudson Riverfronts (www.revitalizinghudsonriverfronts.org), an award-winning riverfront planning guide he co-authored in 2010.

Jeff will explain how a multidisciplinary approach to planning for riverfront development is essential to the protection property, infrastructure and natural resources from rising sea levels and other consequences of climate change. This work has been ongoing for several years, but has attracted particular attention in the wake of Super Storm Sandy.

Biography

Jeff’s love of geography stems from his aunt and uncle who took many road trips across the country and brought him gas station road maps which sparked his imagination of far-off places.  As a kindergartener, “Geography Jeff” was teased by the big kids because he had learned every state capital from a map puzzle. Undeterred by the teasing, Jeff realized he could study geography in college and went on to earn a living while realizing a lifelong dream of using his geographic skills to make the Hudson Valley a better place to live, work, and play.

Jeff earned three related associates degrees (geography, cartography, and community planning) at Montgomery College before earning his BA in geography (cum laude) at the University of Maryland Baltimore County in 1985. (The geography department at UMBC was both the undergraduate home of BSU’s Dr. Hayes-Bohanan and a former employer of BSU’s Dr. Amey.)

He then worked as a planner in Cape Coral, Florida and a GIS manager at RoadNet Technologies, a subsidiary of United Parcel Service in Hunt Valley, Maryland. In 2003 he earned accreditation from the American Institute of Certified Planners (AICP).

Jeff has worked as a planner for Scenic Hudson for over 20 years, and in 2010 he was promoted to Director of Land Use Advocacy. He leads a team of three planners helping communities ensure that riverfront development stimulates the economy, connects people with the river, and conserves views and natural resources.

In 1993 Jeff founded the Hudson Valley Bluegrass Association, a 501(c)3 arts and educational organization and owns a small business specializing in maritime art photography.  He is an avid musician, sailor, bicyclist, hiker, kayaker, cook, and gardener. 

He has served as an adjunct instructor of Environmental Planning at Marist College since 2011.

Our Zombie Apocalypse

The Transportation Department at BSU is careful to provide us with clean, well-maintained vehicles for university-related travel. So it really makes no sense to wash a university van off-campus. Unless ZOMBIES are involved, that is!

While driving back from the NESTVAL 2012 conference in Farmington, Maine, we drove through the mill town of  Livermore Falls, where we noticed teenagers in various stages of decay. With vacant looks in their eyes, they slumped along the side of the road with signs imploring us to support a car wash.

We drove on for a short distance before deciding that this was an opportunity that we would surely regret missing, so we returned to the local fire station, where the van was surrounded by a slow-moving crew that worked around the van with deliberation -- never breaking character as the resentful undead. (See more photos from the conference and the car wash on Flickr, and more about the giant globe we brought to the conference on BSU-EarthView.)

In reality, these are teenagers who are very much alive, participating with their parents and teachers in STEM education as part of the Spruce Mountain Area Robotics Team (SMART 3930). The fundraiser at the fire station was in partnership with the American Red Cross and the Zombie Apocalypse preparedness program of the Centers for Disease Control.

While waiting for the van to be washed, we had the opportunity to talk with some of the community members about the geography conference we had just attended, and about some of the careers available to those studying geography. Disaster preparedness is, of course, one of the many areas to which geographers are well suited, especially as the spatial planning for emergency response increasingly relies on such geotechnologies as GIS, GPS, and climate modeling.

We would love to see some of these S.M.A.R.T. students in our geography classes at Bridgewater in the next couple of years!

Graduate Study in Tennessee

Professor Birge-Liberman recently shared this announcement for those students or graduates interested in further education in human geography.

Opportunities for Graduate Study in Human Geography
The Department of Geography, University of Tennessee is seeking Masters and PhD students to contribute to a burgeoning research focus in human geography, specifically work on social justice, subjectivities and the contemporary struggle for civil and social rights that challenges traditional paradigms in geographical research.  Over the course of the last few years the Department of Geography has added five new faculty members in human geography.  Their research addresses identity issues, with special attention devoted to race, ethnicity, migration, and the politics of place.  We are keen to build up our human geography program and students entering the program will have the opportunity to workwith young, energetic faculty.   Successful graduate students will have a strong background in one or more areas of cultural, political, economic, and urban geography (or related discipline such as sociology, anthropology, or Black studies).  Competitive students will have the chance to earn departmental funding that includes tuition reimbursement and a monthly stipend. The University of Tennessee is a research intensive institution nestled in the Appalachian Mountains and the Department is well positioned within the university.    

For more information please contact: Dr. Derek Alderman (Department Head) at: dalderma@utk.edu or, one of the other human geography faculty (http://web.utk.edu/~utkgeog/facstaff.htm).  If you will be attending the Race, Ethnicity, and Place VI Conference in Puerto Rico in October or the Southeastern Division of the AAG meeting in Asheville, NC in November, please take a moment to chat with Dr. Alderman or another Human Geography faculty member about your interests. The Department is a lively, talented, and congenial community devoted to nurturing students, serving their intellectual passions and vocational goals, and providing them the best learning environment possible—all while advancing the frontiers of geographical knowledge. UTK Geography is devoted to enhancing the diversity of its faculty and students as well expanding opportunities for under-represented groups.

EarthView Gets Around

View EarthView Experience in a larger map

Purple pins = at least one EarthView visit // Yellow pins = upcoming EarthView visit
Sun = EarthView home base // Balloons = Travels of the EarthView team members

Welcome to the new EarthView Experience map. The view above shows most of the places we have taken EarthView, allowing us to reach nearly 40,000 people since the program started in 2008. Zoom out a bit to see some out-of-state visits, the next of which will be in Farmington, Maine. The full map will include several other themes, including the travel and study experiences of EarthView team members and a way for students we visit to mark places of origin outside of Massachusetts.

Perhaps most exciting will be the addition of new points this academic year, as teachers who have completed our EarthView Institute will begin offering programs in their own communities.

Many of these are schools that we visit each year and we have not yet added a few of the schools we visited in the first year, so EarthView has been even busier than it looks. If you have notice a missing visit, please alert Dr. Hayes-Bohanan right away!

EarthView for Life

Photo credit (both the State House photo and the photo of the photo):
Geographer Ashley Costa, BSU EarthView Wrangler

Geography for Life is published jointly by the leading geography organizations in North America, as a guide to those who teach this discipline at the intersection of global studies and STEM disciplines.

After years of anticipation, a new edition was released this month by the National Council for Geographic Education, the Association of American Geographers, and of course the National Geographic Society.

The cover features a photograph of the earth itself. The introductory chapter features a photograph of a remarkable model of the earth -- our department's very own EarthView portable classroom. It is a fitting opening for a book dedicated to geographic education, since nearly 40,000 students have been inside our department's inflatable globe since we acquired it in 2008.

Although EarthView is usually used in classrooms (see videos on our blog), we have also used it is part of our advocacy on behalf of geographic literacy and geography education in Massachusetts. In the NCGE/AAG/NGS publication, EarthView is shown in its highest-profile location in this effort: the Massachusetts State House.

Partly as a result of EarthView and the work of our department and its allies, the Legislature is currently contemplating a commission that would examine geography education in the Commonwealth.

Given the critical state of geographic illiteracy in Massachusetts and in the United States as a whole, the BSU Department of Geography is a leading advocate for geography education at the state and national level. Project EarthView will continue to play an important part, along with our undergraduate, graduate, and outreach programs..

Back to the Fields

Photo: (c) Ashley Costa

July is ending as June did, with an Environmental Geography (GEOG 130) field trip to some real fields -- the organic fields of Colchester Neighborhood Farm in Plympton. The visit during the first summer session was so successful that we decided to visit with students in the second session. This time, we had less rain and more active livestock! In fact, our group was greeted immediately by Dapple, the guard donkey who actively protects the farms sheep, goats, and chickens from canine and raptor predators.

Connie Maribett (second from left above) operates the farm with her husband (and BSU adjunct geography professor) Ron. She spent some time with the group, answering questions about the farm and its partnership with New England Villages. As described in more detail in the June post, this discussion was a perfect compliment to the readings and classroom discussion. It is also helpful, given some of the unpleasant global realities examined in this course, to learn about constructive steps being taken at the local level.

See more photos of the outing -- with further commentary -- on Flickr. Most photos in this series are by geography major Ashley Costa.

Photo: (c) Ashley Costa

On the way to the farm, we briefly visited the historic Oliver Mill Park in Middleboro, an early industrial site that includes one of the earliest and best-known herring runs in southeastern Massachusetts.


View Larger Map

From Parking to Park

This view caught my eye yesterday, as I walked toward the commuter rail station to spend a morning in Boston (you can read about that outing on Environmental Geography). Because of construction involving the pedestrian underpass, I had taken a bit of a detour and was approaching the rail station from the vicinity of the Moakley Center, when the Geography Department's weather sock caught my eye (see detail below and an April post about the weather station itself).

The tremendous pile of sand and gravel occupies what was a useful but barren parking lot just to the east of the railroad tracks. Campus planners have removed that lot, replacing it with tiered parking at the edge of campus. The result will be a campus center that is more inviting for pedestrians, skaters, and bikers. The park that replaces the parking on both sides of the underpass will be cooler in the summer, warmer in the winter, without salt and sand blowing in the winds. Additionally, the relocated parking lot (close to the building itself) will incorporate vegetated swales and retention basins that will reduce flooding, maintain ground water, and improve the quality of surface water. This will make the parking lot itself a destination for mini field trips in our department's water-resources and environmental courses.

Detail of Science & Math Center, showing Geography
Department wind sock.

At almost the same moment I took the photo above, my colleague in Student Affairs, Dr. Tony Esposito, took the following photograph from the top of the Science & Math building. The new parking lot will be in the portion that is to the left of his photo, with access to be through the university's new main entrance next to the railroad tracks on Plymouth Street. The walkway between Kelly Gym and St. Basil's Chapel will be pedestrian only, a great improvement in safety.

Incidentally, the number of parking spaces on campus will not change, as the parking structure offsets all lost parking spaces.

Click to enlarge