Thriving as a Stand-Alone Geographer: A Handbook

By Amanda Rees

Stand-Alone Geographers(SAGE) are those who work in academia, the private sector, government, and non-profit organizations either by themselves or in small groups. Focusing primarily on academic geographers, this book offers a recent survey of academic SAGEs, strategies for positioning geography in a higher education institutions, ideas for how to remain a productive scholar, and recommendations for resources, as well as increasing SAGE visibility in the discipline, and in the Association of American Geographers (AAG).

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Mar 23, 2014
• ISBN: 9781304973375

Book preview

Thriving as a Stand-Alone Geographer: A Handbook

Thriving as a Stand Alone Geographer: a Handbook

Copyright © 2014 Amanda Rees, Stand-Alone Affinity Group,

Association of American Geographers

All rights reserved

ISBN-978-1-304-97337-5

This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Atribution-ShareAlike 3.0

Unported License.  To view a copy of this license, visit

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.5/

Or send a letter to:

Creative Commons

171 Second Street, Suite 300

San Francisco, California 94105

USA

About the Authors

Helen Ruth Aspaas is Retired Affiliate Associate Professor of Geography at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU).  Her research focus is economic development, emphasizing African women, minorities (Native American, Hispanic American and African American) and small enterprise development in rural contexts.  To date, her case studies derive from field work in Kenya, Uganda, central Virginia and the Four Corners area of the American Southwest.  Her 2006 Fulbright Research in East Africa where she completed a longitudinal study of rural Kenya women who operate micro-scale businesses.  Dr. Aspaas also publishes on pedagogical strategies for instructing geography in higher education, and service-learning applications in geography.  She served a two-year assignment as VCU’s inaugural service-learning scholar, directed the LSEE (Liberal Studies for Early and Elementary Education) program and served on the original SAGE founding committee.

Eric D. Carter is an Assistant Professor and holder of the Edens Professorship of Global Health at Macalester College in Saint Paul, Minnesota. He is a medical geographer with connected interests in people-environment geography and historical geography and a regional focus on Latin America. Dr. Carter has published widely on the historical-geographical aspects of malaria control in Argentina, including the book Enemy in the Blood: Malaria, Environment, and Development in Argentina (University of Alabama Press, 2012). Originally from Southern California, he received his BA in History from the University of California, Berkeley and his MS and PhD in Geography from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. He was a stand-alone geographer at Grinnell College, Iowa for five years.

Carolyn Gallaher is a political geographer.  She received her PhD in 1998 from the University of Kentucky.  Her research focuses on political violence by non-state actors including paramilitaries, militias, and narcotraffickers.  She has written two books on this topic:   On the Fault Line: Race, Class, and the American Patriot Movement (Rowman and Littlefield, 2003) which tracked the politics of the Kentucky State Militia Movement, and After the Peace:  Loyalist Paramilitaries in Post-accord Northern Ireland (Cornell, 2007), which analyzed why Loyalist paramilitaries in Northern Ireland took nearly ten years after the peace accord to decommission their weapons and stand down their armed units.  She is currently examining cross-border efforts to police Mexican drug trafficking organizations and is also working on an unrelated project on gentrification in the Washington DC metro area, where she lives.

Jacqueline A. Housel is an associate professor of geography/GIS at Sinclair Community College in Dayton, Ohio.  As a stand-alone geographer, her current focus is on expanding the geography and GIS offerings at the college as well as developing an associate’s degree in geographical information systems.  Dr. Housel’s research focuses on issues of social justice particularly in the struggles over urban spaces in the United States, construction of place identity, white privilege, and social regulation and policing.  Most recently, she has embarked on a community participatory research project that critically examines the practices that support the emergence of an immigrant welcoming initiative in Dayton, Ohio.

Niem Tu Huynh, Ph.D. is a Senior Researcher at the Association of American Geographers (AAG).  Dr. Huynh has worked closely with inner city high school teachers in D.C. and parts of Maryland as part of the My Community Our Earth - Global Connections and Exchange program to introduce mapping and geospatial technologies as tools for data analysis and communication in science. This experience dovetails with her research interest in geography education, specifically learning with geospatial tools. Dr. Huynh serves as an internal evaluator for several education projects and is currently organizing an interdisciplinary workshop on learning progressions. She was the research coordinator and co-editor of Road map for 21st century geography education: Geography education research, a report to improve research in geography education. Prior to joining the AAG, Dr. Huynh was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Geography at Texas State University – San Marcos.

Brian Edward Johnson, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Geography at Auburn University at Montgomery (AUM) where he works in the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Geography.  He is also a Faculty Research Associate at the AUM Center for Demographic Research.  Dr. Johnson serves as the Chair of the Association of American Geographers Stand-Alone Geographers Affinity Group.  His research specializes in urban geography, urban planning, and population geography where he investigates zoning, covenants and property owners’ associations, urban revitalization, and exurban development.  Dr. Johnson teaches Urban Geography, Population Geography, Economic Geography, and introductory geography courses.  He is also a City of Birmingham (Alabama) Planning Commissioner and Vice Chair of the Zoning Advisory Committee.

Camelia-Maria Kantor is an Assistant Professor of Geography at Claflin University. A stand-alone geographer, she reintroduced, developed, and expanded Geography offerings at her institution and was the team leader in the development of a new major in international studies.  Her research and teaching have focused on comprehensive and sustainability plans that use geospatial solutions to address public health issues and the effects of international migration. She specializes in Russian, Eastern European, and Eurasian (REEE) countries with focus on building sustainable and healthy communities in areas formerly reliant on colossus heavy industries and the effects of the post-communist economy on mental health, environmental planning, and overall community well-being.

Amanda Rees is an Associate Professor of Geography at Columbus State University (CSU).  A lone geographer for nine years, she has been Assistant Chair of the Department of History and Geography and is coordinator CSU’s Columbus Community Geography Center in addition to being chair of CSU’s International Learning Community. A cultural geographer, Dr. Rees’ work explores how various discourses and practices shape landscape and region and she’s published on the West, the Great Plains, and Anglo-American New Urbanism. Over the last decade she has established three research and writing groups, both single and mixed gender, in the United States and Britain and she has recently completed an article on faculty peer mentoring (Journal of Faculty Development April 2014).  Dr. Rees has been involved with SAGE affinity groups at the regional (SEDAAG) and national levels for almost a decade, presently serving as SAGE Vice Chair.  She received her BA from West London Institute of Higher Education Combined Honors in Geography and American Studies.  She received her M.A. and Ph.D.in American Studies from the University of Wyoming and the University of Kansas respectively.

Eric K. Spears is an Assistant Professor of Geography at Mercer University.  He is also the Director of International Education, BRIM - the Brazil Institute at Mercer, and the International Scholars Track in Mercer’s Honors Program.  Dr. Spears serves as a researcher in a Brazilian funded bilateral research project called GEPEF – The Political Economy of Education and Human Development at the Federal University of São Carlos (Brazil).  Dr. Spears’ focuses on the political economy of urbanization in Brazil’s favelas (slums) and is currently analyzing public opinion of urban development in the favela of Ladeira dos Trabajaras in Rio de Janeiro.  He has also worked on the political ecology of sustainable development Jekyll Island on the Georgia coast.  Dr. Spears currently serves as co-chair of SAGE in SEDAAG.  Dr. Spears earned his Ph.D. in Geography from West Virginia University, his M.A. in International Political Economy from The University of Warwick (U.K.), and his B.A. in Geography from Marshall University.

Don Zeigler is professor of geography at Old Dominion University in Virginia Beach, Virginia.  He taught on the university’s main campus in a department of five geographers until 2006, when he moved to the branch campus in Virginia Beach as the only full-time geographer there.  He is currently Chief Reader for College Board’s AP Human Geography Exam.  In 1997, he served as President of the National Council on Geographic Education, which he joined as a junior in high school!  He has worked closely with teachers throughout his career and was a driving force behind the establishment of the Virginia Geographic Alliance.  His degrees are from Shippensburg University, the University of Rhode Island, and Michigan State University.  His passions include travel and photography.

Acknowledgements

This book evolved primarily from two conference panels at the Association of American Geographers annual meeting in Los Angeles 2013: Surviving and Thriving as a Stand-Alone Geographer (SAGE) I and II.   Panel members were asked to contribute to the manuscript by extending their original commentary.  In addition, the editors at Professional Geographer kindly granted us permission to re-print an article from their journal.

Lots of thanks are due to a number of people who have made this e-book possible.  Thanks to my SAGE colleague Brian Johnson, Assistant Professor at Auburn University, Montgomery, for offering another eye on the manuscript.  Thanks also to Niem Tu Huynh, Senior Researcher at the AAG, for her editorial help, getting the word out about this project, and being a source of support as this project evolved.  The AAG has also been generous in offering the help of Kelsey Taylor, Intern, designer of our e-book cover, and Leanne Abraham, Research Assistant, for her copyediting skills.

Cover Photo Credits:

Top: Jon Kedrowski, untitled, entry in 2012 AAG Photo Competition

Center: Jon Kedrowski, Celebration in Basecamp with Team and Sherpas, entry in 2012 AAG Photo Competition

Bottom: Alicia Mireya Bravo Frey, Let's Make a Map!, 3rd Place,2012 AAG Photo Competition

Introduction

Amanda Rees

The term stand-alone geographer (SAGE) encompasses geographers who work in academia, the private sector, government, and non-profit organizations either by themselves or in small groups.  SAGE is an affinity group of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) whose members share an interest in the work of stand-alone geographers.  The mission of SAGE is to provide a forum for geographers who work alone or in small programs or departments at their respective institutions to discuss and share resources as well as to increase their visibility in the discipline and in the AAG.

SAGE began as a discussion panel at the SEDAAG (Southeast Division of the Association of American Geographers) meeting in Biloxi, Mississippi, in 2004. At that panel discussion several representatives from the AAG leadership attended and that year SAGE became an active, organized group of geographers sharing mutual interests and concerns.  Led by Helen Ruth Aspaas, the group became an official Affinity Group, and meets annually at each AAG meeting.  The regional SEDAAG group also continues to meet annually. As the group began to gain a foothold in the AAG one of the first documents shared amongst SAGEs was lone geographer Don Zeiglier’s list of ten things SAGEs need to know which was published in the AAG’s newsletter in 2009 (reprinted in this book).

SAGE sponsors professional activities and networking opportunities. Since it was established a decade ago, SAGE presently has nearly 200 members representing 43 states and 15 countries.  However, there are certainly more SAGEs who are not AAG members.  Indeed, it remains a challenge to know how many stand-alone geographers there are in the United States of America’s higher education system as well as those in the private sector, government or non-profit organizations.  However, one of the largest groups that makeup stand-alone geographers are faculty teaching in public and private institutions of higher education who are either the sole representative of their discipline, or are in a department that does not offer geography as an undergraduate major.  This book project focuses on this sub-group of SAGEs. A decade after SAGEs formed, it is an excellent time to celebrate the group’s tenth anniversary in 2014 with this book that explores successful strategies to support SAGEs.

With the help of Helen Ruth Aspaas and the AAG, Eric Carter and Jacqueline Housel (both SAGEs at the time) surveyed 95 SAGEs in 2010-2011.  Focusing particularly on SAGEs who