From 2020 GEOGRAPH Newsletter

Spring spilled into summer, which is spilling into fall. And through these past months, we are strong.

The department budget is healthy; the new curriculum, a boon to undergraduates; our grads, inspiring; online enrollments, higher than ever; and a new master of science online degree in spatial data science, set to kick off in January 2021. We have reworked our fall resident courses to a new mix of remote and in-person. All of our classes with in-person aspects have rooms that accommodate cohorts of students, with social distancing. For example, I plan to see one half of my students on Mondays and the other half on Wednesdays. Social distancing is the challenge that “shrank” all the Penn State classrooms to a small proportion of their regular capacity.

Our work took on new forms through the months. The department created summer jobs for the grads who couldn’t go on to previously planned summer jobs and research trips. Those jobs helped instructors get ready for a new kind of fall. Staff are working effectively from new home offices (and kitchen tables) to keep the department functioning, with new safety plans and new processes for expenses, approvals, appointments, and all those tasks we used to complete in person. I miss the in-person interaction though, especially with new staff. Many of us haven’t met Judy Heltman, our new graduate program assistant, in person yet. We worked on a new departmental five-year strategic plan this past year, and we have a bunch of good ideas that respond to key scientific areas of concern and change in society. Our focus is building a resilient and just world. We are advancing that vision by researching and communicating how to sustain landscapes and livelihoods, respond to the climate crisis, and make data science spatial.

We also welcome two new geography professors this year, Doctors Louisa Holmes and Shujie Wang, whom you will learn about in this issue of the department newsletter. Also in this issue is celebration of our award winners from last year, since we couldn’t get together with our donors for the department’s spring Recognition Reception. Please enjoy catching up with Penn State Geography, and know that we are thriving. I hope that you are building space and place into your life, even if it’s from the armchair at home on too many days.

Edited by Angela Rogers