About the Department

Geography

The field of geography, unlike the world it studies, has no boundaries. Just as others study the dynamics of change in society, culture, politics, economy, or landscapes over time, geographers add the crucial dimension of space. Geography studies the ways people shape and give meaning to their environments and are shaped by them. Human geography (a social science) is concerned especially with the political, economic, social, and cultural processes and resource practices that give definition to particular places and that are affected by them. Physical geography (a natural science) focuses on the earth systems that create the human environment, such as weather, soils, biogeography, and earth sculpting processes.

Thus, geographers are educated both to synthesize work from cognate disciplines and to pose different questions about the places where we live and work and how we shape our world. Learning from both social science and natural science perspectives, geographers are uniquely prepared to consider human and environmental relations in the broadest sense.

Geographers ask not just "what" but "why," seeking to understand the processes influencing human-environment interactions. Answering those questions allows students of geography to look at the fascinating variety of human activity in the world, the human landscape.

That variety is shown in the diversity of the geography department at Bucknell. Beyond their specific expertise in geography, the five faculty members bring to their work backgrounds in law, history, economics, anthropology, ecology and environmental science, and woman's studies. The strength of the department is its breadth - the variety of approaches to take, the variety of subjects and places to study -- and the simultaneous ability to work in depth, drawing upon overlapping and complementary faculty interests. The broad training of each of the geography faculty allows them to contribute to programs across the university as well.

Geography students at Bucknell explore and integrate learning about the many dimensions of the human landscape. Geography courses open up connections across political, economic, cultural, and social dimensions of how people shape and are shaped by their environments around the world.

Students benefit not only from the department's offerings, but also from related programs across the campus, including international relations, economics, environmental science, Latin American studies, political science, anthropology, and women's studies. Students unify their study through the three main themes in modern geography: culture, economy, and environment.

Geography students may specialize according to their own interests by region (especially Latin America, Eastern Europe, Africa, or the Middle East), and also by topic (economic, cultural, political, environmental). Students who specialize in a particular region, such as Europe, Africa, East Asia, or Latin America, are encouraged to travel and study in these areas - through organized study programs during the summer, or through semester or full academic year programs abroad. The department truly has an international perspective.

Geography students also have opportunities for internships with local planning offices, the Soil Conservation Service, and other agencies. Individual research is encouraged, and students conduct laboratory work in computer mapping, in the environmental studies lab, or at Bucknell's 45-acre nature site bordering Chillisquaque Creek, a few miles from campus.

The department's organized study programs integrate classroom learning with on-site practical experience. In recent years, the geography department has offered study programs to the Middle East (Egypt, Israel, and Jordan) and Eastern Europe (Russia and East-Central Europe), as well as more formal summer school courses in Eastern Europe and West Africa.

A degree in geography offers not only an excellent broad-based liberal arts background that helps students prepare for such diverse professions as medicine, law, and management, but in itself it prepares students for a variety of careers; for example, urban and regional planning, environmental management and conservation, industrial location analysis, cartography, and meteorology. Business firms are hiring more geographers now, and Bucknell students are finding their skills and broad backgrounds useful in working in a rapidly changing global economy.

In short, there are many opportunities for geography majors. The careers are as diverse as the field itself.