David Schwarz

David Schwarz (1936-2019) was a professor of geography at San Jose State University. He passed away in Gilroy, CA, aged 82, after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease.

He was born in Mattoon, Illinois, the 2^nd of 7 children raised in a two-bedroom home with a coal stove for heat, and no indoor plumbing. After graduating from Mattoon H.S. he had a series of part-time jobs. The one that became the most significant was as a disk-jockey at a local radio station playing country and western music. To his friends, he seemed to know every country and western song ever recorded (both lyrics and melody). A random word or phrase in conversation would sometimes launch him into a song.

He continued with part-time jobs while attending Eastern Illinois University in Charleston, a few miles east of Mattoon. He graduated in 1963 with a double major, art and geography. One part-time job using his art skills, was to paint colorful signs in grocery store windows advertising weekly sales. It was during this era that he served six years in the National Guard.

David then attended Southern Illinois University (1963-1965), but left to pursue a Ph.D. degree at the University of Kansas under David Simonett, a world-renowned scholar in the field of remote sensing. Dr. Schwarz completed his Ph.D. in 1975, with a dissertation titled “Variability of the Accuracy of Delineating Agricultural Field Boundaries from Satellite Images of the United States.” He accepted a position in geography at San Jose State University in 1971, and rose through the ranks to become a full professor. David’s publications were in the general area of remote sensing, and he taught many courses on this subject. He spent his entire career at SJSU, and was an excellent teacher, attracting many students to his regional classes. He had small classes of dedicated students when teaching technical courses (as remote sensing, digital image processing, geographic information systems, cartography, and the like).

SJSU was in financial difficulty in the early 1980s, and social science layoffs were threatened. David helped alleviate this situation by accepting a position as a Visiting Professor at the Air Force Academy for two years (1980-82). He later taught courses on statistics in the College of Business in order to strengthen their doctoral program (in areas for which he was not trained, business or statistics, but he did an excellent job). Throughout his career David served on university committees and gained much knowledge of the university and how it operated. He was a very likeable and competent person, known for his integrity, and thoughtful and reserved demeanor. One of his colleagues called him “the Gary Cooper of the university.” Through committee work he developed many friendships with fellow professors in different disciplines. This deep background was a great help when he accepted administrative positions at SJSU.

Dave began his administrative work as Chair of Geography and Environmental Studies (1991-1995). He had the difficult and challenging task attempting to unite the two disciplines. David later began a five-year term (1996-2001) as Associate Dean in the College of Social Studies. These were the happiest years in his career, as he received wonderful support from the college staff, and from friends and staff in various departmental offices. David retired from SJSU in 2001, but continued to teach a course most semesters until the sudden departure of a dean. He once again helped SJSU, as he served as a dean for another year, and retired for the last time in 2005.

He is survived by his wife Deborah Walker Schwarz, two children, Sarah Nilsson and Noah Schwarz, and two grandchildren. He was predeceased by his parents, Raymond Noah and Gladys Elizabeth Schwarz, and two brothers James and Joseph Schwarz.

By Malcolm Comeaux and Deborah Schwarz

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Journals

AAG Announces New Annals Editors, Thanks Leaving Editors

December 17, 2019

The AAG welcomes two new editors to take the positions of the Human Geography and Nature & Society editorships for the Annals of the American Association of Geographers. Kendra Strauss of Simon Fraser University will be taking over for Human Geography Editor Nik Heynen while Katie Meehan of King’s College London will assume the role of the Nature & Society Editor as James McCarthy’s term ends. The AAG sincerely thanks Nik Heynen and James McCarthy for their four years of exemplary service in these positions.

Kendra Strauss is both an Associate Professor and Director of the Labour Studies Program and The SFU Morgan Centre for Labour Research as well as an Associate Member of the Department of Geography at Simon Fraser University. Before taking on her current position, Strauss was an Urban Studies Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Glasgow and then held a permanent lectureship in the Department of Geography at the University of Cambridge from 2012 to 2014. Her focus as a geographer and feminist political economist revolves around labor politics, the definition of work, the regulation of labor markets, and geographical imaginations of environmental change. Strauss brings to the Annals a background in editing as the co-editor of two books, Precarious Worlds: Contested Geographies of Social Reproduction and Temporary work, agencies, and unfree labour: Insecurity in the new world of work. She has also served on the editorial boards of six journals in geography, labor studies, and political economy.

A human-environment geographer and water policy specialist by training, Katie Meehan is Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at King’s College London and the lead PI of the Plumbing Poverty project. Prior to King’s, she was Assistant and then Associate Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Oregon, from 2010 to 2019. Her expertise includes urban political ecology, infrastructure and social inequality, water insecurity and development, science and technology studies, climate change adaptation, and the politics of environmental knowledge at the science-policy interface. Meehan is a mixed methodologist, combining data from diverse sources such as ethnography, household surveys, Q method, and census data. Her research has appeared in journals such as Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Science, Geoforum, Environment and Planning D, Water International, Environmental Science and Policy, and WIREs Climate Change. Meehan is on the leadership team of the NSF-sponsored Household Water Insecurity Experiences Network.

The AAG would like to express its appreciation for the work of Nik Heynen as the past Human Geography Editor for the Annals. Heynen, a Professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Georgia, contributed his valuable experience as past Editor of Antipode and founding editor of the Geographies of Justice and Social Transformation Book Series to the AAG, ensuring the Annals remained a journal held in high regard by the Geography community.

A sincere thank you to James McCarthy as he leaves his post as the Nature & Society Editor for the Annals. A Professor of Geography at Clark University, McCarthy edited the most recent Special Issue of the Annals on Environmental Governance in a Populist/Authoritarian Era, which is now available as a stand-alone edited volume from Routledge. As the Nature & Society Editor since January 2016, McCarthy’s dedication has continued the tradition of publishing research of high quality and rigor expected from the AAG.

Strauss and Meehan will begin their service in these roles on January 1, 2020.

Annals, Annals of the AAG, editors, Journal editors, The Annals of the American Association of Geographers

New Books for Geographers

New Books: December 2019

December 15, 2019

Every month the AAG compiles a list of newly-published books in geography and related areas. Some are selected for review in the AAG Review of Books.

Publishers are welcome to send new volumes to the Editor-in-Chief (Kent Mathewson, Editor-in-Chief, AAG Review of Books, Department of Geography and Anthropology, Louisiana State University, Baton Rouge, LA 70803).

Anyone interested in reviewing these or other titles should also contact the Editor-in-Chief.

PLEASE NOTE: Due to current public health policies which have prompted the closing of most offices, we are unable to access incoming books at this time. We are working on a solution during this transition and will continue our new books processing as soon as we can. In the meantime, please feel free to peruse previous books from our archived lists.

December 2019

After Geoengineering: Climate Tragedy, Repair, and Restoration by Holly Jean Buck (Verso Books 2019)

Blue Legalities: The Life and Laws of the Sea by Irus Braverman and Elizabeth R. Johnson, eds (Duke University Press 2020)

City of Refuge: Slavery and Petit Marronage in the Great Dismal Swamp, 1763-1856 by Marcus P. Nevius (University of Georgia Press 2020)

Disaster Upon Disaster: Exploring the Gap Between Knowledge, Policy and Practice by Susanna M. Hoffman (Bergahn Books 2019)

Half Broke: A Memoir by Ginger Gaffney (W. W. Norton & Company 2020)

The Licit Life of Capitalism: US Oil in Equatorial Guinea by Hannah Appel (Duke University Press 2019)

Making Industrial Pittsburgh Modern: Environment, Landscape, Transportation, Energy, and Planning by Jill Lindsey Harrison (MIT Press 2019)

Murals of the Americas: Mayer Center Symposium XVII, Readings in Latin American Studies by Victoria I. Lyall, ed (University of Oklahoma Press 2019)

Punctuations: How the Arts Think the Political by Michael J. Shapiro (Duke University Press 2019)

Carl Lewis Johannessen

Carl Lewis Johannessen (1924–2019), a literal and figurative giant of cultural-plant geography and cultural-diffusionist studies, died at age 95, on 13 November 2019. He was Professor Emeritus and one-time head (1978–1981) of Geography at the University of Oregon, where he had been hired in 1959. Carl was a charter member of the Editorial Board of Pre-Columbiana: A Journal of Long-distance Contacts, which I founded and edit, as well as a contributor and the dedicatee for book 6(2–4). The geographer Daniel W. Gade pointed to his contributions as a cultural diffusionist, in book 3(1–3).

Born in Santa Ana, CA, on 28 July 1924, Carl served with the Navy in the Pacific during World War II. He earned a B.A. in Wildlife Conservation and Management at the University of California, Berkeley (1950), an M.A. there in Zoology (1953)—both under A. Starker Leopold—plus a Ph.D. in Geography (1959) with Carl O. Sauer. Johannessen was one of the last living links to the “Old Man” among products of the “Berkeley School.” Another influence was the Missouri Botanical Garden botanist Edgar Anderson.

Johannessen was an inveterate library and field scholar, though one little concerned with convention. He examined human impacts on wild plants as well as domestication as a process and the histories and geographies of individual domesticates. He initially worked in the Americas and in 1999 received the Conference of Latin Americanist Geographers’ Preston E. James Eminent Latin Americanist Career Award (see C.L.A.G. Yearbook 25). However, from 1985 on, turmoil in Central America led him to concentrate instead on South Asia, where horticultural similarities inspired hypotheses of pre-1492 transoceanic interinfluences. He also worked in China and in Polynesia.

Johannessen followed up on my 1978 observation concerning the depiction of a maize ear in a pre-1492 South Indian sculpture, discovering hundreds more and recognizing images of other American domesticates (confirmed by Shakti M. Gupta in 1996). During the 1980s, his presentations on this generated considerable interest. At a 1988 conference, Carl met the Brigham Young University anthropologist John L. Sorenson, which led to a collaborative encyclopedic collection of data demonstrating the previously unimagined magnitude of the pre-Columbian interhemispheric exchange of organisms. World Trade and Biological Exchanges Before 1492 represents a particular milestone in the study of pre-Columbian human mobility. It was self-published, commercial presses having considered the esoteric content to be unsalable.

In 1973, Carl had encountered the Asian-looking black-boned, black-fleshed chicken (“BBC”), in Guatemala, and he and his hiree May Fogg discovered that Native American (but not Mestizo or Euroamerican) keeping of this strain was widespread, as were associated medicinal usages closely reminiscent of practices in China.

In 2016,Johannessen published a more-popular book on early international biological transfers: Pre-Columbian Sailors Changed World History (like the 2013 volume, reviewed in 2019 by Charles F. Gritzner, in The AAG Review of Books 7). The ever-game 94-year-old Johannessen’s last conference presentation was delivered in Sitka, in 2018.

Carl was also concerned with practical applications concerning cultivated plants and engaged in plant-breeding experiments on his farm.

—

Stephen C. Jett

University of California, Davis

333 Court St., NE

Abingdon, VA 24210-2921

[email protected]

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Post

Introducing the “Climate Action Task Force”

October 28, 2019

In response to the current climate crisis, last spring we circulated a petition among various geography listservs requesting that the AAG Council take significant action “to reduce CO2 emissions related to the Annual Meeting.” The petition asked that the “Council do so in a manner commensurate with what the recent (October 2018) Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) special report asserts is needed to limit global warming to 1.5°C: about a 45 percent cut (from 2010 levels) by 2030, and ‘net zero’ emissions by 2050.” In light of the strong support that the petition received, the AAG Council responded in April with the creation of a task force charged with redesigning the Annual Meeting so that it is a low-CO2-emitting endeavor. The task force is mandated to transform the Annual Meetings in a manner that is effective in meeting the needs of AAG members and that is also socio-spatially and environmentally just.

Since that time, the Annual Meeting Climate Action Task Force, under the leadership of Wendy Jepson, professor of geography at Texas A&M University and member of the AAG Council, has recruited a diverse group of geographers from across the United States and Canada to serve as members. Through various working groups, task force members are currently focused on three areas: 1) conducting research into qualitative and quantitative dimensions of the carbon regime that underpins the AAG’s conference model; 2) exploring how information and communication technologies can be best mobilized to offer rewarding virtual experiences for conference participants; and 3) organizing a first round of special initiatives at the AAG annual meeting in Denver in 2020.

Climate Action Task Force Members
Kafui Attoh, City University of New York	Elizabeth Olson, UNC Chapel Hill
Daniel Bedford, Weber State University	Aparna Parikh, Dartmouth College
Tianna Bruno, University of Oregon	Paul Robbins, University of Wisconsin–Madison
John Hayes, Salem State University	Sue Ruddick, University of Toronto
Wendy Jepson, Texas A&M, task force chair	Sarah Stindard-Kiel, Temple University
Oscar Larson, AAG	Elin Thorlund, AAG
Patricia Martin, Université de Montréal	Jayme Walenta, University of Texas at Austin
Joseph Nevins, Vassar College

Smaller academic associations have already experimented with low carbon conferencing (e.g. the Society of Cultural Anthropology’s 2018 Conference, Displacements, a hybrid of a virtual conference and in-person gatherings at sites across the world linked via the internet). However, no large learned society has directly engaged with an attempt to transition to a low-carbon conference model. Thus, this initiative has the potential to place the AAG at the cutting edge in the struggle against climate change.

To ensure the wellbeing of the AAG, while seeking to provide a stimulating and inclusive environment for the diverse community of geographers, we envision proposing and experimenting with a series of initiatives aimed at implementing change in an incremental way over the next five years. Accordingly, we are working on a series of special initiatives for Denver 2020 that will also serve as a means for charting future pathways. While the plans are still preliminary, these initiatives include a virtual plenary session with Kevin Anderson, professor of energy and climate change at the University of Manchester and the former Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research. We also are organizing a series of “blended” sessions related to the taskforce’s major themes, in which there will be a combination of virtual and on-site participation. These panels and paper sessions will explore a range of issues, including emerging models for academic conferences, the promises and pitfalls of carbon offsetting, and the dilemmas of knowledge production in an era of climate disruption. We hope as well to have a room dedicated to a variety of virtual experiments that will bridge research, activism and performance to highlight the importance of this initiative. Another innovative initiative will seek to match senior geographers with emerging scholars in a virtual “conversation over coffee.” Finally, we will organize a special poster session with the purpose of helping us to reimagine the AAG annual conference in 2025. Through these diverse initiatives, we seek to understand the impact virtual conferencing might have on participants’ experiences, while testing the limits and possibilities of different technological infrastructures that could be mobilized to support low-CO2 conferencing.

We understand that changing our professional behaviors is difficult. Our discipline and our careers are often based in large part on in-person connections with physically distant places and people throughout the world. In our professional and personal lives we are immersed in social practices in which air travel is profoundly normalized, and viewed as both a necessity and an unquestioned right. Yet we also know that climate disruption is already here and that air travel is a significant source of CO2 emissions. If we take seriously the gravity of a situation so clearly spelled out by climate science, then we must collectively create new ways of being in the world, which means weaving new kinds of relationships between individuals and communities, both near and far. In this sense, rethinking the dominant modes of academic conferencing presents the possibility of creating new forms of academic relationships and exchange that remain fully engaged in the world. We may “lose” some things; but we will gain as well. In this sense, the goal of the Annual Meeting Climate Action Task Force is in no way to undo the AAG or question its relevance, but rather position both our discipline and our association at the forefront of progressive change.

If you are interested in learning more about the initiative or engaging with the Task Force, please contact Wendy Jepson at: wjepson [at] tamu [dot] edu.

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0064

On the topic of the ecological footprint of academic travel, there is a rapidly growing body of literature. Here are two recent articles that we recommend:

Julien Arsenault, Julie Talbot, Lama Boustani, Rodolphe Gonzalès and Kevin Manaugh, “The environmental footprint of academic and student mobility in a large research-oriented university,” Environmental Research Letters, Vol. 14, No. 9, 2019

Seth Wynes, Simon D. Donner, Steuart Tannason, Noni Nabors, “Academic air travel has a limited influence on professional success,” Journal of Cleaner Production, Vol. 226, No. 20, 2019: 959-967

Other resources are listed at: www.flyingless.org

New Books for Geographers

New Books: October 2019

October 15, 2019

Every month the AAG compiles a list of newly-published books in geography and related areas. Some are selected for review in the AAG Review of Books.

Anyone interested in reviewing these or other titles should also contact the Editor-in-Chief.

October 2019

The Atlas of Boston History by Nancy S. Seasholes. eds. (University of Chicago Press 2019)

Borderless Empire: Dutch Guiana in the Atlantic World, 1750–1800 by Bram Hoonhout (University of Georgia Press 2020)

Building Nazi Germany: Place, Space, Architecture, and Ideology by Joshua Hagen and Robert C. Ostergren (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2020)

The City as Power: Urban Space, Place, and National Identity by Alexander C. Diener and Joshua Hagen, eds. (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2018)

The Confounding Island: Jamaica and the Postcolonial Predicament by Orlando Patterson (Harvard University Press 2019)

Detours: Travels and the Ethics of Research in the Global South by M. Bianet Castellanos (University of Arizona Press 2019)

Franz Boas: The Emergence of the Anthropologist by Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt (University of Nebraska Press 2019)

The Freedom Of Speech: Talk And Slavery In The Anglo-Caribbean World by Miles Ogborn (University of Chicago Press 2019)

The Global PR Revolution: How Thought Leaders Succeed in the Transformed World of PR by Maxim Behar (Allworth Press 2019)

How Nature Works: Rethinking Labor on a Troubled Planet by Sarah Besky and Alex

Blanchette, eds. (University of New Mexico Press 2019)

Limits: Why Malthus Was Wrong and Why Environmentalists Should Care by Giorgos Kallis (Stanford University Press 2019)

Manufacturing Decline: How Racism and the Conservative Movement Crushed the American Rust Belt by Jason Hackworth (Columbia University Press 2019)

Mapping Populism: Taking Politics to the People by John Agnew and Michael Shin (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2019)

Necropolitics by Achille Mbembe (Duke University Press 2019)

Pepper: A Guide to the World’s Favorite Spice by Joe Barth (Rowman & Littlefield Publishers 2019)

Postcards from the Chihuahua Border: Revisiting a Pictorial Past, 1900s–1950s by Daniel D. Arreola (University of Arizona Press 2019)

Racial Alterity, Wixarika Youth Activism, and the Right to the Mexican City by Diana Negrín (University of Arizona Press 2019)

Settler City Limits: Indigenous Resurgence and Colonial Violence in the Urban Prairie West by Heather Dorries, Robert Henry, David Hugill, Tyler McCreary, and Julie Tomiak, eds. (University of Manirova Press 2019)

Silk Roads: Peoples, Cultures, Landscapes by Susan Whitfield, eds. (University of California Press 2019)

Stranger Things and Philosophy: Thus Spake the Demogoron by Jeffrey A. Ewing and Andrew M. Winters, eds. (Open Court Publishing Company 2019)

Transforming Rural Water Governance: The Road from Resource Management to Political Activism in Nicaragua by Sarah T. Romano (University of Arizona Press 2019)

Undocumented Migration by Roberto G. Gonzalez, Nando Sigona, Martha C. Franco, Anna Papoutsi (Polity 2019)

Water Politics: Governance, Justice and the Right to Water by Farhana Sultana and Alex Loftus, eds. (Routledge 2020)

President's Column

Introducing the Themes for the 2020 AAG Annual Conference

August 15, 2019

Each year the AAG president helps to identify a few themes for the AAG Annual Conference. While any topic is accepted for presentation at the annual meeting and participants are encouraged to develop their own special sessions, themes encompass a few specific points of interest for our Annual Conference and are used to organize a series of sessions, to focus discussion, and to highlight key events during the conference.

The AAG is pleased to announce three themes for the 2020 Annual Conference to be held in Denver from April 6–10: The Changing North American Continent, Ethnonationalism and Exclusion around the World, and Expanding the Community of Geography.

The Changing North American Continent examines how the land and people have been transformed from pre-history through history. A meeting in Denver, the capital city of the U.S. West, allows us to focus specifically on the transformation of the western landscape, the effects of climate change, indigenous rights, new immigrant geographies of the West, the perils to our ecosystems, water scarcity and distribution, the West as a social laboratory, and other related aspects. We seek papers and other forums that address these topics and that otherwise fit within this broad rubric.

Ethnonationalism and Exclusion around the World describes and interrogates new political movements based around a more exclusive form of national identity. These movements often draw on race-based appeals, target immigrant populations, and may be violent. While ethnonationalism has been present within every society throughout history, modern-day ethnonationalist movements have given rise to several strong political movements contributing to the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom, the rise of populist parties in Hungary, Poland and Brazil, and the election of U.S. President Donald Trump. An exclusionary nationalist identity has also led to the hardening of borders as well as the vicious repression and destruction of minority groups, such as the Uighur people in China and the Rohingya in Myanmar. As part of this theme, we seek papers and other forums that are broadly concerned with nationalism, ethnic-inspired terrorism, racism, immigration, genocide, borders, populism, electoral geography and other related aspects.

Expanding the Community of Geography looks at how we can increase the active participation of geographers, at the AAG and elsewhere, who may have otherwise felt excluded, moved away from geography as a discipline, or may not realize their kinship with geography. One factor of this exclusion lies with geographers who work in often underrepresented institutions. This includes stand-alone geographers, community college stakeholders, those who work and study at Historically Black and Tribal institutions, and geographers who work outside of the academy. Most people who go on to get a Masters or Ph.D. in geography do not end up working as academics. They may have drifted away from the AAG, and we need to find ways to increase their contribution and interest in our society. As part of this theme, we seek papers and other forums that involve coping with limited resources, enhancing geography at minority serving institutions, community engagement, outreach to geographers beyond the academy, alternative ways of knowing, fostering interaction among stand-alone geographers, and many other related aspects.

Since the AAG first introduced themes for the annual meeting, they have been used to emphasize a particular set of interests. These three themes speak to the significance of our meeting’s location in Denver, the political era we find ourselves in, and the need to foster a larger and more inclusive geographical community. Future presidents will focus on different sets of themes and this is as it should be.

If you find that your interests intersect with one of these three themes and would like to serve on a committee, please contact me directly at dkaplan [at] kent [dot] edu. And if you find that your session, poster, or paper corresponds with a theme, please consider adding it to the lineup for our 2020 AAG meeting in Denver.

— Dave Kaplan
AAG President

President's Column

Should we be worried? Or how to maintain and expand the number of geographers in our schools.

July 1, 2019

As geographers, we all know the value of geography. Right? It is a field that provides a unique perspective, an appreciation for particularity, an opportunity to synthesize. But as much as we affirm geography’s value to each other, we also need to look at how geography is perceived outside of our community.

In this regard, the last year or so has been sobering, at least for Geography in the United States. Geography degrees have been closed in some universities, including Boston University, whose Geography Ph.D. program did so well in the last National Research Council ratings. Geography has been threatened (but ultimately spared) at others, despite reorganization and faculty layoffs. Then, to add insult to injury, a recent report in Inside Higher Education (highlighting an even more precipitous drop in History) showed how the number of Geography majors had also declined in the last six years, falling about 7 percent. No matter our research excellence, our success in procuring funding, our prominence in public discussion – if geography loses its majors, the field as a whole is in peril. This was a point expressed many years ago in Ron Abler’s classic column “Five Steps to Oblivion.” Ignoring majors is a sure-fire path to program destruction and, as we know full well, we can never take geography’s position in the curriculum for granted.

So should we be worried? We should at least be guarded. The trends of major loss in the last few years are real, but there are other countervailing forces on which geographers should capitalize.

Compared to the other liberal arts, geography in the United States is a distinct underdog. We are the smallest of these traditional disciplines, just a bit under geology, physics and anthropology, and dwarfed by the likes of psychology and biology. Only 1 percent of all liberal arts majors specialize in geography. (By comparison, geography is squarely in the middle of the pack in the United Kingdom, comprising 5 percent of all liberal arts.) Geography has not been commonly taught in U.S. high schools. It is further hamstrung by its absence in most colleges and universities, relying on the larger state schools, some community colleges, a sprinkling of private colleges, and a very few private universities to provide the courses. Where geography is present, the departments tend to be small and most student majors arrive after their sophomore years.

Yet as a discipline, we punch far above our weight. Much of this is thanks to the AAG. Our membership of 12,500 rivals fields such as history, sociology, and political science. Our activities involve collaboration with geographers and other scientists around the world, many of whom look to American geography as a beacon, to the AAG as the one necessary organization, and to our annual meeting as the place to convene. About one-third of our membership is international, buoying our disciplinary footprint. Other strong organizations, like the American Geographical Society, the National Council for Geographic Education, and the Society of Women Geographers also help lay a foundation for geography outside the academy and in the schools.

A closer examination of the major numbers in the United States also shows that our recent decline may be a short-term phenomenon. Between 2007 and 2013, the number of geography majors grew 22 percent, and even with the decline in the last four years, we are still up nearly 10 percent over the last decade. But we may still look at how these recent trends could be reversed — a project that could involve seeing where the declines were sharpest and identifying possible areas of growth. (Liberal Arts as a whole has also suffered small declines). That we are in a better position in regard to majors than we were 11 years ago is a positive sign, but still worrisome.

One very encouraging sign is in the expansion of some of geography’s closest cognates — fields like meteorology, environmental studies, area studies, and the like. These are fields commonly folded within geography departments and so almost always can count as a “geography” major. The table below shows the most important of these:

Pursuing such strategies entails the teaching of geography by other means. Students want geographical knowledge, they gain this by taking classes in these close cognates — often with geography professors — and they come out with much greater exposure to geography than would have otherwise been the case. Some of these incorporations may be acknowledged by renaming and Five Steps to Oblivion; other times the department may keep its name and just promote its diversity of offerings. To be sure, some of the traditional quasi-geographical specializations such as landscape architecture and area studies have declined. But there has been an explosion in environmental studies and global studies, with more modest growth in some of the other close cognates. If geography departments can capture those majors, the path toward sustainability becomes much clearer. At my department for instance, we were able to create an environmental studies major precisely because there was nothing like this available on campus. As a result, we have tripled our “geography” major numbers within the last two years. Other departments may pursue other strategies. Middle Tennessee State University, for instance, has a vibrant Global Studies major.

The last point I want to make also has potential to be the greatest opportunity. Since its inception, the Advanced Placement Human Geography high school course has exploded. Thanks to geographers like past President Alec Murphy, David Lanegran, and others, we were able to create this AP course in the 1990s and it has continued to defy all expectations. Out of the 38 AP exams given, AP Human Geography ranks in 10^th place. (Environmental Science ranks 13^th). The most striking aspect is its growth. Human Geography has grown by about 450% since 2008, far ahead of any other subject. And all signs indicate that this expansion will continue, as AP Human moves into other parts of the country.

Unfortunately, this phenomenal growth has yet to translate into major gains in college majors. AP courses/tests should make a positive difference in later specialization. Whether they just confirm existing intentions or open up new possibilities is still in question. But some worry that they end up eating into introductory course offerings. But there can be no doubt that this is a city-sized opportunity available to us. We need to devise ways as a discipline to turn these high school learners into college majors. The AP Human Geography exam and other AP possibilities will be the subject for a future column.

So despite some reason to worry, longer-term trends in the last decade are still positive, some of our closest cognates are growing briskly, and the expansion of AP Human Geography has been nothing short of phenomenal. The long-term health of the discipline is not assured, but it is within reach. We must exploit our advantages.

If you have gotten this far, let me extend my gratitude to all of you for giving me the chance to serve as president of the American Association of Geographers. I am humbled in succeeding people like Glen MacDonald, Derek Alderman, and Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach, not to mention all the luminaries who served before them. I look on these columns as an opportunity to shine light into some of the various features and problems of our discipline. Among these will be columns on creating a more inclusive academic culture, the internationalization of the AAG, the explosion of metrics in our discipline, publishing paradoxes, encouraging great writing, managing mental health, promoting opportunities beyond academia, and rethinking the regions. I hope that each column helps to further a dialogue, as there are rarely easy answers. We just need to keep trying. Please email me at dkaplan [at] kent [dot] edu with your thoughts.

— Dave

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0056

Source for this data comes from IPEDS Access Database for Integrated Postsecondary Education Data (IPEDS) Collection, https://nces.ed.gov/ipeds.

President's Column

Geography, Green Resolutions, and Graduation

May 16, 2019

Complex organizations have complex interests and responsibilities, especially in the 21^st century. My October 2018 Column reminded us to keep our eyes on the prize of equity for all. Together, we Geographers have worked diligently over the last several years to shine a light on equity and banish harassment and bullying from our meetings, our places of work, and our lives. We have more work to do, but we do have a heightened awareness, and a strong, renewed resolve to move forward with justice. Even though we have a strong Statement of Ethics (2009) condemning workplace harassment and discrimination, we further renewed our resolve to fight bullying and harassment with the Harassment Free AAG Initiative of 2019 (Please also remember to take the Post-Meeting Survey). And we will keep working to improve the climate for all. While keeping an eye on our social and civil well-being, the well-being of our planet also needs our attention and actions as strongly as ever. Protecting the civil rights and human rights of scientists helps to advance and protect science, to the benefit of people and the planet.

Headlines are just as alarming on the environmental justice side of the scales as they are on the social justice side. A recent email correspondent offers fair points regarding institutions and fossil fuel divestment, but implied that AAG is neglecting the environment because of our recent focus on anti-harassment initiatives. We should not be forced to make a false choice between the workplace climate, the atmosphere, and our fiduciary responsibility to members and donors as a non-profit, among others. AAG has invested in a portfolio of green funds, and it is worth thoughtful consideration of additional long-term, planet-healthy investment strategies, absolutely. We must of course maintain a complementary balance of Planet Earth’s and her Inhabitants’ well-being. Our AAG Logo and flag, after all, are green.

Recent headlines and reports include this week’s news that atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations have hit an all-time high of 415 ppm (Washington Post, 5/14/19). That concentation is the “…highest level in human history” (WaPo 5/14/19). Other headlines include news that “humans are speeding extinction and altering the natural world at an ‘unprecedented’ pace” (NY Times 5/12/19).

In light of these daunting global trends, members of the U.S. Congress, led by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Sen. Ed. Markey have proposed a non-binding resolution, the Green New Deal. The Green New Deal does not pit society against the environment, but blends the well-being of both by resolving to “reduce greenhouse emissions…to avoid the worst consequences of climate change while also…addressing “societal problems like economic inequality and racial injustice.”(New York Times, 2/21/19).

The plan encompasses five main goals to:

“invest in sustainable businesses”;

“Move to 100% clean energy by 2030”;…

“Create a Commission…to provide publicity, training, education and direct financing” for projects and reforms;

“Establish a renewable Energy Administration” modeled after Roosevelt’s “Rural Electrification Administration”; and

Create a “Full Employment Program… a direct employment initiative to guarantee jobs and a living wage for every American…” (See this link for the Full Plan Language).

Geographers’ diverse talents and insights can contribute in all of these areas.

Within the AAG’s ranks, there are also renewed Green goals. AAG passed a Resolution Requesting Action on Climate Change in 2006. In Spring 2019, a group of members have pointed out that much has changed in the last 13 year since that resolution, and it is time to strengthen our commitment to fight climate change. This monumental effort was led by Geographers Rutherford H. Platt, Ian Burton, Susan Cutter, James Kenneth Mitchell, James L. Wescoat, Claire Rubin, and Martin A. Reuss. The group sent a new Resolution on Climate Change to Council, which was passed unanimously at the April 2019 AAG Meeting. The new Resolution was rooted in the legacy of Geographer and National Academy of Sciences Member Gilbert White (1911-2006), for whom a special session was convened by the aforementioned panelists at the 2019 Annual AAG Meeting. Dr. White’s work showed compassion for people and the environment, with his pioneering work using planning policies to move people out of dangerous flood plains and save lives and property, as opposed to sole reliance on technological solutions to flooding and flood control. His floodplain management work is a great example of fulfilling the human right to benefit from science. The Green New Deal echoes this, incorporating smart business and social policy solutions to improving the environment, the economy, and people’s well-being together. The new AAG Climate Change Resolution promotes 8 goals to fight climate change, compatible with the Green New Deal, summarized at the AAG Website 2019 AAG Climate Resolution for full details. Many thanks to the authors, and to the AAG Council for supporting this.

Future Geograph-ies/-ers

It is graduation time and the goals of social and environmental justice should inspire the new generation of Geographers who are graduating this month from our institutions. We welcome them to the company of scholars and professionals, and we encourage them to carry the torch forward, to create a better social, physical, and technological world, and a brighter future. We also need to continue lending our full support as senior scholars and professional mentors for the latest generation of Geographers, in whom I have great hope, confidence, and inspiration. I end this column with my very best wishes and gratitude to my students who will always be members of our home departmental community, and to all students at this important time of transition in your lives. Congratulations to all, and to those who share in your success!

— Sheryl Luzzadder-Beach
President, American Association of Geographers
Professor, Geography and the Environment and C.B. Smith Fellow in US-Mexico Relations, University of Texas at Austin

Feel free to share your thoughts with me at: slbeach (at) austin (dot) utexas (dot) edu

DOI: 10.14433/2017.0054

Daniel McGlone

Education: Masters in Urban Spatial Analytics (University of Pennsylvania), Bachelors in Geography and Geospatial Imaging (Harrisburg University of Science and Technology)

Could you give us a description of your job and some of the primary tasks and duties for which you’re responsible?
Azavea is a geospatial software company. We’re a mixture of professional services and products. I am the Senior GIS Analyst the Data Analytics team. I’m the only person at the company with a degree in GIS, so I’m the lead on any task that involves spatial analysis. We have projects that we work on for clients that involve spatial analysis or data analysis that produce maps or reports. We also service other teams in the company, so there might be a team that’s building a geospatial software application, and they might need some data analysis or data prep.

As the Senior GIS Analyst, I am often working any of the ends on projects as well as the analysis. When we’re scoping out a proposal, I’ll work on that and outline the different tasks that we’re going to be doing, the different steps in the geospatial analysis, as well as the outline of which tools and software we’re going to use to complete the analysis. I work hand in hand with the project manager, and we deliver a scope to the client. They’ll approve it or we’ll have negotiations around it, and then we’ll begin working on the project. When a project begins, I’ll work with the project manager to assign tasks and roles. The project manager will be the primary point of contact with the client, and I’ll be working internally with the team, often doing a lot of the analysis work, and finishing off the deliverables and end products and handing them over to the client.

Who are your clients?
Azavea is a B Corporation – that stands for “Benefits”. We’re a for-profit company, but we’ve operated with the mission of a nonprofit, so we work on projects that we think benefit the world and the community we live in. Primarily our clients are nonprofits, foundations, or governments. We also pride ourselves as a civic technology firm. We work on a lot of projects that we think help connect people with decision makers, and help improve the civic sphere that we all live in.

My other job title is Cicero Data Manager. Cicero is a database of elected officials, their contact information, and legislative districts for 9 countries, all 50 states, and about 300 cities throughout the United States. I’m in charge of maintaining all of our data on elected officials. We provide Cicero as a database so our clients, which are normally nonprofits or advocacy organizations who are trying to connect their members with elected officials, can advocate for their cause. We offer our database to them to use internally.

How do you perceive the value and importance of geographic knowledge in performing your work? Could you give us a breakdown of the substantive, conceptual, and procedural geographic knowledge you’ve acquired through your training in geography and how this relates to your job?

Being the only person with a GIS Analyst job title in my company means that I am the one that people go to when they have questions about how to complete a project with spatial analysis or geographic data.

I would say the substantive and conceptual knowledge are important usually for scoping out projects and thinking about how to complete projects. We often have clients that come to us with limited budgets, or they have a lot of data and they just don’t know what to do with it. Having a conceptual knowledge of the type of tools that you would need to run, or the type of analysis that you would need to do is really important because that helps scope out a project and figure out the solution to their problem. They might have a bunch of data about their clients, and where their clients live, but they might not know that census data exists. We can predict where other clients might be that they haven’t tapped into. Having that kind of conceptual knowledge about the relationship between people and place is really, really important.

Procedural knowledge comes in when we actually win a project. We have to figure out how we are going to go about doing it. It’s also helpful in terms of scoping out projects. We tend to respond to a lot of RFPs for work, and we apply for a lot of small business innovation research (SPIR) grants. We have a technical writer, so she responds to all of these and writes up proposals. Sometimes, she’ll come to me if there is an opportunity through a government agency, so we can figure out if we can complete that project and how exactly we would do it.

To give an example, we recently had an opportunity to do some work in Madagascar. Our client wanted to work with folks on the ground in mapping Madagascar to better connect people with elected officials to promote environmental policy. Our solution was to leverage our Cicero product to get the legislative district boundaries for Madagascar and the elected official data, and then build a mobile app that allows people in Madagascar to connect with their assembly members in the legislature. Also, we could take environmental data for Madagascar to collect land cover change, climate, and other geographic/spatial data and aggregate that into legislative districts. This would actually give people information about land cover change, deforestation, and habitat change in their district so they could inform their elected official or assembly member about what was happening. We had to find the unique solution to that problem, and it was conceptual geographic knowledge that really helped figure that out.

Substantive knowledge definitely comes into play as well. We use census data all the time in our projects. We have to figure out what is the best census data to use, and what’s the best administration level (tracts, block groups, blocks, metropolitan areas). That comes into play with a lot of our projects, including some of our software projects where we have to scope out what is the best way to display this data on a web map (MSA level, block level, tract level, state level).

What have you observed in your work in terms of impacts in your applications and uses of geography and through your organization?
At Azavea, our bottom line is that we want our projects to have a positive impact on the community. A few years ago, we worked with the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children. They are an organization that advocates for higher quality child care across the Philadelphia region. We took data on childcare institutions in the city of Philadelphia and ranked the quality of childcare at these institutions. We looked at the quality of childcare and also the risk factors or negative impacts on children in Philadelphia, and then we ranked and scored city council districts using that information. We created these targeted reports that showed the city council how they were ranked against other city council districts. It enabled the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children to advocate for increased funding for childcare. That was really powerful, as the city council ended up awarding the Delaware Valley Association for the Education of Young Children $500,000. They also got a matching grant from the William Penn Foundation. They ended up getting a million dollars to improve the quality of childcare and education for young people in Philadelphia.

That kind of model of creating, aggregating, scoring and ranking data by legislative or council district has been effective for us for a lot of different causes. Last year, I was an expert witness for a federal court case on gerrymandering here in Pennsylvania. We had an organization that was filing a lawsuit to get the congressional districts in Pennsylvania overturned as a gerrymander. They needed some mapping done to prove that some districts were gerrymandered. In terms of this court case, I was brought on and mapped out all of the congressional districts. I also used data on a partisan voting index at the voting precinct level to show that the districts were gerrymandered. The evidence and the data that was used in our case were used in the subsequent court case at the state level, which actually won and overturned the congressional districts. I can’t say that our case was successful as we were turned down in federal court in a 2-1 decision, but the subsequent state case in the state court did end up winning.

What is it about geography that inspires you and helps you pursue your life aspirations?
I have been interested in geography and maps for my entire life. I love to travel and see new places in the world, and knowing about geography and having that understanding has helped me become a better world traveler. I feel that my deep interest and understanding of geography has also helped me become a better, more engaged citizen politically. Geography gives me a better understanding of different places and different people. In terms of my professional life, I had a lot of different options. Underlying all of these options was a strong interest in geography, and I felt that GIS was the way to go.

If you could think back to that undergraduate experience you had at Harrisburg, when did you have that ‘a-ha’ moment with geography?
One of these moments occurred when I was in an undergraduate course. I have always been pretty interested in urban planning and considered it as a potential career opportunity. When I first discovered the extent to which GIS could be used in planning and transportation analysis, I became even more interested in it. I worked on a project where I mapped out a potential commuter rail line between Harrisburg and Lancaster, and I used GIS to figure out how many people lived within certain distances of different branches of railroads for potential community rail lines. It was all very conceptual, and it was all very basic, but it was then that I realized “wow, this is really powerful.”

As someone who has been interested in politics all my life, another moment was when I first realized that I can connect the dots with GIS data in terms of redistricting and drawing legislative district lines. There’s not enough discussion about how, as a GIS Analyst, I can help make redistricting and drawing of lines more accessible to everyday people. At Azavea, I had the opportunity to work on one of our projects called District Builder, which is an online, web-based tool for drawing legislative districts. It was kind of a moment when I realized “wow, GIS is so important and fundamental to how we vote,” and that was definitely an ‘a-ha’ moment for me in realizing what I wanted to do as a GIS analyst and as a geographer.

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