Geography

Examining the ways people shape and give meaning to their environments and are shaped by them

www.bucknell.edu/geography

Career Paths

Geography prepares students for a variety of careers, including urban and regional planning, environmental management and conservation, industrial location analysis, meteorology, medicine, law and management.

Some students go directly into careers in planning agencies, both public and private, while others gain employment working with geographic information systems and cartography. Alumni have secured the following positions:

  • Marketing Coordinator, ESPN
  • Rural Development, Peace Corps
  • Geographer, U.S. Department of State

Grants & Awards

Geography faculty members have received grants and awards from:

  • National Science Foundation
  • U.S. Department of Justice
  • Fulbright U.S. Scholars Program
  • Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History

Facilities & Resources

Geography students have access to lab and field facilities, including computerized geographic information systems laboratory facilities, an environmental science laboratory, and a nearby 45-acre nature site. Central Pennsylvania offers some of the finest field sites in the East — small towns, forests, strip mines, rivers and wetlands.

Quick Facts

Number of full-time faculty: 5

Average number of majors per class year: 5

Internships

Geography students have opportunities for internships with local planning offices, the Soil Conservation Service and other agencies. Students often obtain summer internships through Bucknell’s McKenna Environmental Internship Program or in planning and environmental agencies nationwide. Recently, students have interned at:

  • National Geographic Education
  • Susquehanna Economic Development Administration - Council of Governments (SEDA-COG)

Study Abroad

Bucknell’s geography department has an international perspective. Students often spend a semester or year abroad in their specific region of interest, such as Europe, Africa, East Asia or Latin America. Recently, students have gone global through:

  • Bucknell on the Susquehanna
  • Florence
  • Guatemala
  • Milan

Program Details

  • Bucknell’s geography program encourages in-depth, interdisciplinary and critical views of how people’s activities in political, economic, social and cultural dimensions create environments and are influenced by them.
  • Students may focus on either human or physical geography courses or a combination of both.
  • Human geography (social science) courses focus on the political, economic, social and cultural processes and resource practices both in and between places.
  • Physical geography (natural science) courses focus on the earth systems that create the human environment, such as weather, soils, biogeography and earthsculpting processes.
  • Close ties with other departments and programs allow students to pursue complementary studies in such fields as economics, political science, sociology, environmental studies, women’s and gender studies and international relations. Many geography students choose to double major.

Faculty

Duane Griffin
B.F.A. New Mexico; M.S., Ph.D.Wisconsin at Madison
Scholarly interests: biodiversity, physical geography, human-environment interactions

Ben Marsh
B.A. California at Santa Cruz; M.S., Ph.D. Penn State
Scholarly interests: physical environment, human adaptation, maps, G.I.S., geoarchaeology

Karen Morin
B.A. Nebraska at Lincoln; M.A. Bowling Green; Ph.D. Nebraska at Lincoln
Scholarly interests: social geography, gender, history of geography, travel

Adrian Mulligan
B.A. University of Wales, U.K.; M. Phil. University College, Cork, Ireland; Ph.D. Arizona
Scholarly interests: political, cultural, historical geography

Paul Susman
B.A. Oberlin; M.A. Boston; Ph.D. Clark
Scholarly interests: economic geography, development/environment, political economy, Caribbean and Latin America

Undergraduate Research

Beginning in their first year, geography students frequently work with faculty on special research projects, which help them develop their analytical and research skills. Recent student projects include:

  • "Union County's Vegetation Cover at the Time of the European Settlement," Nick Gozalves, 2010.
  • "Bucknell University Arboretum Spatial Database, Website, and Walking Tour," Daniel Wang, Giorgina Alfonso, Bobby Mullin, and Nick Gonsalves, 2008-2010.
  • "GIS analysis of the environmental contexts of historic Indian site" NPS/John Smith Trail Project. Emily Bitely, 2009.
  • “A Spatial Analysis of a Museum: The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Presentation of Space and Culture,” Meghann Muirhead, 2009
  • “A Lived Geography,” Antoinette Klatzky, 2008

Selected Faculty Scholarship

Duane Griffin, “Diversity Theories" in A. Millington and M. Blumler (eds) Handbook of Biogeography, Sage, in press.

Duane Griffin, Fine-scale habitat fragmentation and species coexistence. International Biogeography Society Conference, Merida, Mexico, 2009.

Ben Marsh, “Using neutron activation analysis to identify scales of interaction at Kinet Hoyuk, Turkey,” with Grave, P., Kealhofer, L., Gates, M.H., Journal of Archaeological Science, July 2008.

Ben Marsh, “Institutionalization of Racial Inequality in Local Political Geography,” with Allan Parnell and Ann Joyner, Urban Geography, Summer 2010.

Ben Marsh, “Building the Next Seven Wonders: The Landscape of Rhetoric of Large Engineering Projects,” with Janet Jones., in Stanley D. Brunn (ed.) Engineering Earth: The Impacts of Megaengineering Projects., Springer Science+Business Media, 2010.

Ben Marsh, “Ceramic production and provenience at Gorion,” with Lisa Kealhofer, Peter Grave, Kenneth Sams, Mary Voigt and Keith DeVries, Journal of Archaeological Science, June 2009.

Karen Morin, Civic Discipline: Geography in America, 1860-1890, Ashgate, 2011.

Karen Morin, Frontiers of Femininity: a New historical Geography of the Nineteenth Century American West, Syracuse University Press, 2008.

Karen Morin, Women, Religion, & Space: Global Perspectives on Gender and Faith, co-edited with J. Guelke, Syracuse University Press, 2007.

Adrian Mulligan, '“By a Thousand Ingenious Feminine Devices": The Ladies' Land League and the Development of Irish Nationalism,' Historical Geography 37, 159-177 (2009).

Adrian Mulligan, "Countering Exclusion: the 'St. Pats for all' parade," Gender, Place and Culture 15:2,153-167 (2008).

Adrian Mulligan, "Parading Possibility: 'St. Pats for All' and the re-imagining of Irishness" in D. McNamara, Ed., Which Direction Ireland?, Cambridge Scholars Publishing. 2008.

Paul Susman,"Uneven Development and Grounded Comparative Institutional Advantage: Lesson from Sweden and Mondrago," Forum for Social Economics 39:1, 1-11 (2010).

Paul Susman, "Transformation Through the Brigades," Forum for Social Economics 38:2, 247-262 (2009).

Paul Susman, “Trade, People & Places: an Institutionalist, Social Economic, Geographic Approach to Comparative Institutional Advantage” with Geoff Schneider, Review of Social Economy 66:4 (2008).

Courses Offered

Geography students choose much of their own course of study, in consultation with faculty members, drawing upon the many courses and specialties of the faculty and, if they choose, focusing on a particular world region.

Applied G.I.S.
Cultural Geography
Economic Geography
Europe in the Age of Globalization
Evolution, Ecology and Human Impact
Food and the Environment
From Earth to Home
Gender and Geography
Gender, Place and Culture
Geographies of Globalization
Geographies of Health
Geographies of Nationalism
Geography Capstone
Geography of Pennsylvania
Global Environmental Change
Grass Roots Development: Nicaragua
Human Impact on Environment
Introduction to American Studies
Introduction to Human Geography
Landforms of the World
Marine Environment
Political Geography
Reading the Cultural Landscape
Special Topics in Geography
Third World Development
Topics in Advanced Economic Geography
Topics in Advanced Physical Geography
Topics in Advanced Political Geography
Topics in Advanced Social Geography
Undergraduate Research
Urban Condition
World Environmental Systems

Graduate School

A degree in geography offers an excellent foundation for graduate studies. More than half of Bucknell’s geography majors attend graduate or professional school programs in areas such as urban, regional and environmental planning and management, law, international affairs or related fields. Alumni of the program attend some of the finest geography graduate schools, including Clark University, Penn State, the University of Minnesota, the University of Wisconsin and Widener University.