Department of Geography (DoG) News and Events Where it's at!

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Alan Taylor and his son Erik hiking in Gimmelwald, Switzerland, in November 2014, looking toward the Jungfrau.

GOOD NEWS

• Laura Harding won first place in the AI student awards competition for oral presentations at the American Meteorological Society conference in Arizona.

NEWS

January 30 The Miller Lecture Glen MacDonald “Climate Change and Perfect Drought in California and the Southwest–Past, Present and Future”

At present California and finds itself in extreme climatic drought with local and Colorado River reservoir systems sorely stressed. This current ‘Perfect Drought’ should not be thought of as a local or short-term phenomenon, but in the context of an early 21st Century Drought that has maintained aridity over large portions of the Southwest continuously since the beginning of this century. This talk will examine the current state of the drought, its historical and prehistorical context and antecedents, and how it may relate to anthropogenic climate change.

• 3:00 to 5:00 p.m.
• Refreshments are offered in 319 Walker Building at 3:00 p.m.
• The lecture begins in 112 Walker Building at 4:00 p.m.
• Coffee Hour To Go
• Next Week February 6: Becky Mansfield “Epigenetic life: non-dualist geographies of body-environment relationships”

Get involved with the UnderDoGS

The UnderDoGS at Penn State are a group of undergraduates in the Department of Geography. The UnderDoGS represent the commitment of the students in the Department of Geography to not only excel in their studies, but also to contribute to their fellow students and to society.

Search underway for tenure-track faculty position in Africa, Environment, Health
The Department of Geography and the African Studies Program at The Pennsylvania State University invite applications for a joint tenure track faculty position at the assistant or associate professor rank.  The tenure home for this position is in Geography.  We seek a geographer, or a scholar working in a closely related field, whose research focuses on environment and human health in Africa.  The candidate is expected to have significant experience working in Africa, and is expected to contribute to the undergraduate and graduate curriculum in both Geography and African Studies.

Graduate student investigates community response to domestic violence
The modern law enforcement approach to domestic violence has saved the lives of countless women, and it has also raised new concerns about how survivors are perceived and what communities can do to empower them. Dana Cuomo, a graduate student in the Department of Geography, spoke about her research on domestic violence in front of the American Association of University Women’s State College chapter at Schlow Library on November 3, 2014. The talk included analysis of research from her dissertation project, supported by a 2014-2015 AAUW American Fellowship.

Twitter feed brings Michigan’s past to life
On a recent morning, the photos posted on the Twitter feed Michigan’s Past included a moody, rainy take on Lansing’s Allegan Street, circa 1948; and a postcard from the early 1900s featuring gigantic winter squash. Mason Christensen (B.A. ’09), its creator, has shared 14,000-plus posts with the Twitterverse over the past year. Also among them: beautiful black-and-white pictures from the early 1940s of Michigan farm life, a news clipping from the defunct Kalamazoo Telegraph detailing the sad story of a boy who died after somehow being impaled by a cornstalk and a nifty photo of a long-gone lumber mill on the Flint River.

DOG OF THE WEEK

Last week’s dog was Pumpkin, a 2-1/2-year-old German Shorthair Pointer-Golden Retriever mix, companion to Jodi Vender. Send a photo of your dog to geography@psu.edu for our mystery dog of the week!

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

iMPS-HLS students, families, and faculty at University Park in December for Commencement.

Congratulations to online Geospatial Intelligence Option in the Master of Homeland Security (iMPS-HLS)  students who graduated at December 2014 Commencement. Students and families who attended in person are pictured above. Photo and identification by Todd Bacastow.

GOOD NEWS

Russ Hedberg published a book review in the journal Agriculture and Human Values. It’s published online now and will appear in the March issue. The book he reviewed is “Labor and the Locavore: the Making of a Comprehensive Food Ethic,” by Margaret Gray.

Before Amanda Young came to Penn State, she was the manager of the Mount Allison University Dendrochronology Lab (MADLAB) in Sackville, N.B., Canada. One of the projects she worked on was dating a hockey stick that the owner believed to be really old.  They successfully dated it, and it turns out to be the oldest hockey stick found to date.  Last week the hockey stick was sold by the owner to the Canadian Museum of History. Read more about the hockey stick: http://www.capebretonpost.com/News/Local/2015-01-09/article-4001723/Cape-Breton-hockey-stick-sells-for-$300,000/1

NEWS

January 23 Coffee Hour Peter Wilf “Patagonian Fossil Floras: Keys to the Origins, Biogeography, Biodiversity, and Survival of the Gondwanan Rainforest Biome”

The outstandingly rich, little-sampled fossil beds of Patagonia, Argentina, have unrivaled importance for understanding the evolution of Southern Hemisphere biodiversity and biogeography. Our international, long-term project in Patagonia has yielded significantly improved chronostratigraphy and many unprecedented, firmly dated paleobotanical discoveries from Late Cretaceous to Eocene sites, providing a massive infusion of primary data for testing evolutionary and biogeographic scenarios and framing new research. For example, the extremely diverse, Eocene paleorainforest sites at Laguna del Hunco (52.2 Ma) and Río Pichileufú (47.7 Ma) produced many first South American records of important genera that now survive at great distance in the Old World (sub)tropics.

• 3:30 to 5:00 p.m.
• Refreshments are offered in 319 Walker Building at 3:30 p.m.
• The lecture begins in 112 Walker Building at 4:00 p.m.
• Coffee Hour To Go

Next week: January 30 The Miller Lecture Glen MacDonald “Climate Change and Perfect Drought in California and the Southwest–Past, Present and Future”

Penn State MOOC introduces geospatial intelligence to students around the world

Geospatial intelligence was born of the defense industry, but Todd Bacastow said it can have broader applications in business and law enforcement as well. Bacastow, the lead faculty member in Penn State’s geospatial intelligence program, hopes Geospatial Intelligence and the Geospatial Revolution, a free online course that started Jan. 14, will help broaden the appeal of the discipline beyond the world of defense, both in and outside the United States.

Then-and-now sliders show 60 Years of Urban Change: Midwest

60 years has made a big difference in the urban form of American cities. The most rapid change occurred during the mid-century urban renewal period that cleared large tracts of urban land for new highways, parking, and public facilities or housing projects. Fine-grained networks of streets and buildings on small lots were replaced with superblocks and megastructures. While the period did make way for impressive new projects in many cities, many of the scars are still unhealed. We put together these sliders to show how cities have changed over half a century. In this post, we look at Midwestern cities in Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio.

Developed at Stanford, a website about comedian Richard Pryor’s early years reveals the complex history of race in an American sin city

Most people remember Richard Pryor as a groundbreaking African American comedian and social critic who crossed over Hollywood’s racial boundaries in the 1970s with a string of buddy comedies co-starring Gene Wilder. What many don’t know, however, is how his early years spent in the red-light district of Peoria, Illinois, shaped his evolution as an artist. … Erik Steiner (M.S. ’01), creative director of Stanford’s Spatial History Project, worked with Saul to develop the site and create maps of the region. Steiner describes Peoria as not just a stage for Pryor, but a main character in his life story. It was a diverse, heterogeneous place where issues of class, race and sexuality intersected with the geography of the city.

Now available: IJSLE special issue: University Engineering Programs That Impact Communities: Critical Analyses and Reflection

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DOG OF THE WEEK

Who is this dog? Who is her human?

Last week’s dog was Kenobi, a 9-week-old black lab/Australian shepherd mix, companion to MGIS student Chris Dunn. Send your answer and/or a photo of your dog to geography@psu.edu for our mystery dog of the week!

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

MGIS students, families, and faculty at University Park in December for Commencement.

Congratulations to online MGIS students who graduated at December 2014 Commencement:  Ryan Davis, Amanda Dulin, Monique Everson, Casey Finedell, Matt Gill, Erin Goodnough, Lance Hackelton, Jerry Hayes, Joel Irish, Lindsey Kiesz, Kristina Kwiatkowski, Ryan Lamar, Sarah McCabe, Justin Novak, Steve Perrine, Mark Rozmarynowski, Josh Ryan, Nathan Scott, Mike Shaffer, John Shinsky, Marnie Sippel, Pete Telek, Susan Williams. While not everyone could attend commencement in person, everyone deserves recognition for their accomplishments.

GOOD NEWS

Alex Klippel was successful in working with the graduate school to complete final approvals for the Ph.D. dual-title graduate degree program in African Studies. We have that degree in place starting next year for interested geographers.

NEWS

January 16 Coffee Hour

Jaime Alves “On deaf ears: police terror, black protest and the making of the white polis”

This presentation explores the racialized dimensions of policing practices in Brazil. To do so, we look not at the police, their administrative organization, and practices, but rather, we examine the modes of sociality reflected in and produced by police violence. Drawing from a statistics-based analysis of the social and political outcomes produced by the state in its preparation of mega-sporting events – evictions, incarceration, and police violence, for example – we identify a nexus between, on the one hand, racialized violence against black bodies, and on the other, white loyalty to the state, despite, or precisely because of, a specific type of violence perpetrated by the state on white bodies.

• 3:30 to 5:00 p.m.
• Refreshments are offered in 319 Walker Building at 3:30 p.m.
• The lecture begins in 112 Walker Building at 4:00 p.m.
• Coffee Hour To Go

Next week:

January 23 Coffee Hour Peter Wilf “Patagonian Fossil Floras: Keys to the Origins, Biogeography, Biodiversity, and Survival of the Gondwanan Rainforest Biome”

In memoriam

We learned of the passing of some colleagues:

• George Demko (Ph.D ’64) died in early November.
• Professor Emeritus C. Gregory Knight died January 1, 2015

Deadlines approaching for key University Awards

Follow the links below for submission requirements.

• Rosemary Schraer Mentor Award, Due: February 12, 2015
• Achieving Women Award, Due: February 12, 2015
• George Schenck Teaching Assistant Award, Due: February 15, 2015
• Women’s Studies Outstanding Graduate Student Teaching Award Due: February 17, 2015

From Campus Technology

6 Alternative Social Media Tools for Teaching and Learning

Social media has changed the way people communicate and share information in their personal and professional lives. It’s a safe bet that most students in any college classroom have used or are familiar with sites like Facebook and Twitter. Yet surprisingly, some instructors have felt resistance from students when they try to incorporate common social media tools into the classroom.

“For a lot of them, it’s their friends on Twitter, and they don’t really want to share their homework or talk with their teacher on Twitter,” said Seth Dixon (Ph.D. ’09), an assistant professor of geography at Rhode Island College.

From WIRED

Turns Out the Internet Is Bad at Guessing How Many Coins Are in a Jar

By Erik B. Steiner  (M.S. ’01)

A few weeks ago, I asked the internet to guess how many coins were in a huge jar (below). For more than 27 years, my parents had saved their spare change. My mother recently trucked the whole load to a bank to cash in, and in so doing finally learned the stockpile’s actual value, or at least the value as calculated by that particular coin-counting machine. The update from Mom got me wondering: Might someone be able to guess that amount? What about our collective estimate—is the crowd really as wise as some say it is?

DOG OF THE WEEK

Who is this dog? Who is his human?

The last dog  of 2014 was Viviana, 3-year-old German Shepard mix and companion to Kathy Cappelli, undergraduate student and public relations intern in the Department of Geography. Send your answer and/or a photo of your dog to geography@psu.edu for our mystery dog of the week!