Coffee Hour | Summer good news | UROC and more!

IMAGE OF THE WEEK

Welcome Back Reception at Hintz

A bird’s-eye view of the department’s Welcome Back Reception held August 24 at the Hintz Family Alumni Center. Newcomers were introduced and welcomed as students, faculty and staff reunited and shared tales of their summer adventures.

GOOD NEWS

Kevin Bernstein, Yanni Cao, Carolynne Hultquist, and Mark Simpson earned their master’s degrees.

Doug Baldwin, Elaine Guidero, Li-San Hung, Paulo Raposo, and Chongming Wang earned their doctoral degrees.

Sara Cavallo, Carolyn Fish, Laura Harding, and Nari Senanayake passed their comps.

Rachel Isaacs, Nate Frey, and Jase Bernhardt defended their dissertations.

Welcome to our newest postdocs: Liping Yang in GeoVISTA and Carlington Wallace in Riparia.

Brian King and Karl Zimmerer are back from sabbaticals.

Erica Smithwick is back from her Fulbright semester in South Africa.

NEWS

Fall semester Coffee Hour kicks off September 9
This fall’s Coffee Hour lectures will start on September 9 with Ann Jolly, an epidemiologist at the University of Ottawa. Coffee Hour is a weekly lecture hosted by the Department of Geography on Friday afternoons celebrating interdisciplinary scholarship and collegiality for nearly 50 years. Topics range from innovations in GIScience, to food security, to land use and justice issues, among others. All members of the Geography, Penn State, and Centre County community are invited to attend in person or via webcast. The list of confirmed speakers is on the Coffee Hour webpage http://www.geog.psu.edu/news/coffee-hour. Details about each talk are added as they are provided. Each week’s Coffee Hour information will be included in the DoG enews.

UROC open for fall graduate project submissions
Take advantage of the great opportunity to have an undergraduate research assistant with UROC (Undergraduate Research Opportunity Connection). A research assistant can help you with making maps, reviewing literature, transcribing or coding interviews, analyzing data, etc. Your UROC project can be linked to your thesis or dissertation research, or a side project. Either way, UROC gives undergrads great experience working on real research projects, and mentoring an undergraduate can be a great way to prepare for an academic career. To get started as a mentor, submit the details of your project at: http://www.geog.psu.edu/uroc-project. Be sure to include the number of credits, and whether the work can be conducted remotely. For examples of past projects, visit the UROC page: http://www.geog.psu.edu/uroc

This year’s UROC coordinators are Russ Hedberg and Eun-Kyeong Kim.

Department Newsletter
The Summer 2016 Department of Geography annual newsletter, GEOGRAPH, is now available online.

GEOGRAPH highlight
Because of mentors like you …
I was asked to write a few words about Brent and it is with pleasure that I do so.  Brent Yarnal is my academic father. As a professor, I am often asked to write letters of recommendation or support for students and colleagues and I always try to do so as best as possible, but this letter or short note is special. I can honestly say that outside of my parents no one has had a more positive influence on my life than Brent Yarnal. I have known Brent for about thirteen years, having met him when I arrived to attend the graduate program in the Department of Geography at Penn State. Brent was my adviser for both my master’s and doctoral degrees; as such, I spent many hours with Brent as a student and later as a colleague. I could not have asked for a better mentor and friend.

RECENTLY (OR SOON TO BE) PUBLISHED

Geography of Adolescent Obesity in the U.S., 2007−2011
By Michael R. Kramer, Ilana G. Raskind, Miriam E. Van Dyke, Stephen A. Matthews, Jessica N. Cook-Smith
In American Journal of Preventive Medicine
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2016.06.016
Obesity remains a significant threat to the current and long-term health of U.S. adolescents. The authors developed county-level estimates of adolescent obesity for the contiguous U.S., and then explored the association between 23 conceptually derived area-based correlates of adolescent obesity and ecologic obesity prevalence.

Reanalyzing environmental lidar data for archaeology: Mesoamerican applications and implications
By Charles Golden, Timothy Murtha, Bruce Cook, Derek S. Shaffer, Whittaker Schroder, Elijah J. Hermitt, Omar Alcover Firpi, Andrew K. Scherer
In Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jasrep.2016.07.029
This paper presents a preliminary archaeological assessment of extensive transects of lidar recently collected by environmental scientists over southern Mexico using the G-LiHT system of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. In particular, this article offers the results of a first phase of research, consisting of: 1) characterization and classification of the cultural and ecological context of the samples, and 2) bare earth processing and visual inspection of a sample of the flight paths for identification of probable anthropogenic Precolumbian features.

“DOG” OF THE WEEK

dog of the weekWho is this horse? Who is his family?

Each week we feature a photo of a mystery animal companion. Any animal companion can be the dog of the week. Have fun guessing which human cares for this creature and learning about the members of our community.

Send your photos and/or your guesses to geography@psu.edu. The identity of the mystery animal and the correct guesser will be revealed next week.

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