 Letter from the Chair  
Fall 2011
August 29th, 2011
Dear Alumni and Friends of UK Geography,
The past couple of years have certainly been eventful ones in the life of the department. We have been through some sad times, but we have also begun to grow in exciting new directions. The sad news first: we lost Tom Leinbach in December 2009 and then in March 2011 Dick Ulack passed away. It is still hard to believe that these two colleagues and friends are gone. Even though both had recently retired, we now more sharply miss their energy and leadership.
On a happier note, our physical geography program continues to develop. In 2009 Daehyun Kim added his biogeography skills to the mix. Daehyun, together with Jonathan Phillips and Alice Turkington, crafted a strategic plan for the physical program, and we have been able to hire Tony Stallins (PhD Georgia; most recently at Florida State University) at the Associate Professor rank, and Liang Liang (PhD University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee) as an Assistant Professor. Tony and Liang joined us in August 2011. Tony brings expertise in biogeomorphology and Liang adds his specialty in bioclimatology. Now we have a first rate team in place and we're excited about what these colleagues can do individually and collectively to further enhance physical geography at UK.
With the retirement of Michael Kennedy (to whom we offer congratulations on 46 years at UK!) we have been able to renew the GIS/geospatial technologies aspect of the department. To that end, with support from the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Mark Kornbluh, we have two new faculty in this area. We welcome Associate Professor Jeremy Crampton (PhD Penn State University; most recently at Georgia State University), with interests in mapping, critical cartography, and GIS, and Assistant Professor Matt Wilson (PhD University of Washington), with expertise in GIS and community mapping. Jeremy and Matt have already been working with Jeff Levy to ready the GIS Teaching Lab in the White Hall Classroom Building for a more intense and diverse roster of GIS and related courses at all levels. We are thrilled that UK Geography is now poised to make our own distinctive mark in the world of geospatial technology.
In the meantime, everyone has been busy! Our faculty and students continue to enjoy great professional success. We have a new book display in the department and there is an impressive array of books authored and edited by faculty. Karl Raitz's co-edited The Great Valley Road: Shenandoah Landscapes from Prehistory to the Present won The Allen Noble Book Award from the Pioneer America Society. We may have to install another bookcase for Stan Brunn's impressive three volume set on Engineering Earth: The Impacts of Megaengineering Projects!
I continue to feel proud when I review the tables of contents of top journals and notice the names of UK geographers, present and alumni, among the authors. Recent successes at NSF have been recorded by Anna Secor, Patricia Ehrkamp, and Morgan Robertson and PhD student Christine Smith won a multi-year NSF Graduate Research Fellowship. Additional awards have come in for faculty and students from Fulbright and the Inter-American Foundation, among others. It was also lovely to see colleagues Paul Karan and Karl Raitz recently recognized by the University for their many years of great scholarship and dedicated service. Paul was University Research Professor in 2010-11 and Karl is the University's Distinguished Service Professor (2010-13).
As you might expect, geographers continue to play leading roles in interdisciplinary programs and initiatives on campus. This year, for example, members of the newly formed student-led Political Ecology Working Group (PEWG) held a very successful conference at UK that attracted over 125 scholars who, by all accounts, very much enjoyed the papers, field trips, and discussions. PEWG members are already planning the next conference.
In response to opportunities presented by the university-wide restructuring of our core general education curriculum, Geography faculty have developed a suite of new courses at the introductory level designed to excite beginning students about geographical approaches to topics such as health and disease, inequality, conflict, information technology, migration and climate change. To provide more chances for active learning in small group discussion sections and labs, the College gave us eight additional Teaching Assistant lines which have put our graduate program on an even surer footing.
So, in many ways, the qualities that UK Geography is known for endure, although some of the names and faces are new. This combination of careful building on firm foundations on the one hand, and fresh ideas and energy on the other, means that UK Geography is positioned very well for the future. Whether it is working to create the most exciting, challenging, and coherent program of study for our undergraduate majors, or crafting the best graduate programs we can, the department faculty strive to bring the intellectual excitement of our research and scholarship into the classroom. This, along with the passion we have for working collectively ensures that UK Geography will be a special place to work and learn for many years to come.
Thanks very much for your interest in Geography at the University of Kentucky. Please feel free to check out our website (though forgive us for some parts that are "under construction"). Also, you might wish to "like" us on our Facebook page "University of Kentucky Geography Grad Alums". Of course, if you would like to visit us in person, you're always welcome here!
Best wishes,
Sue Roberts
(Professor and Chair)
Past Editions
Fall 2008
Welcome to the University of Kentucky Department of Geography!
Generations of faculty, students, and staff have laid a strong foundation upon which we continue to build. Geography at the University of Kentucky is internationally respected for its top quality research and for its vibrant graduate program. We also have a strong and broad undergraduate program. I invite you to discover more about all aspects of the Department by exploring our web pages.
Under the wise leadership of Karl Raitz, who was our longtime Chair until stepping down in June 2008, the Department grew to nineteen faculty members. Faculty work individually and in collaboration to conduct a broad range of research in human and physical geography and to win extramural research funding. We have about forty graduate students, with over half enrolled in the PhD program. Graduate students are involved in most aspects of departmental life, and often work with faculty on research and writing projects. The departmental office staff and the staff in the Cartography and GIS labs are also significant members of the departmental team -- making sure things run smoothly and efficiently. Students, staff, and faculty alike value the genuinely collegial atmosphere that characterizes the Department.
These are exciting times for the Department. The University of Kentucky is a land grant public research university with a mission to become one of the US’s top 20 public research universities and Geography has been identified for special investment under the Commonwealth of Kentucky’s Research Challenge Trust Fund in line with the mission. With support from the University and from the College of Arts and Sciences, we are strategically building on our existing strengths in human and physical geographic al research and in our award-winning undergraduate and graduate teaching.
I hope you will enjoy learning more about our department as you peruse these web pages. Please contact us with any inquiries.
Sue Roberts
Chair
Fall 2006
The 2006 academic year was a banner year for the department! Professor Paul Karan celebrated 50 years in the department this spring. Paul obtained his PhD from Indiana University in 1956, and accepted a position as assistant professor in the Geography Department. He served two terms as departmental chair from 1967 to 1975 replacing former departmental head Joseph Schwendeman. Paul’s research early on focused on the Himalayan Kingdoms and more recently his studies have turned toward Japan and East Asia. Paul is the author of dozens of scholarly journal articles and books, including recent monographs that examine Japan’s current economic geography and that nation’s economic and cultural ties to Kentucky. Paul was a charter member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and serves as development planning and environmental management consultant to governments and international agencies in the Asia-Pacific region. He chairs the College of Arts & Sciences Japanese Studies Committee. In 1985, the Arts & Sciences faculty elected Paul as the college’s Distinguished Professor, the highest recognition bestowed by the college, for his outstanding record in research, teaching, and service. The department is grateful to Paul for his 50 years of distinguished service and leadership and congratulates him on his considerable list of accomplishments.
In addition, three significant events occurred in the department this year. First, in 2005, College Dean Steve Hoch and University Provost Mike Nietzel announced that the Department of Geography was selected for enhanced investment and will be given four new faculty lines. This is a rare opportunity for the department—the first time that we have hired four faculty members in a single year. Our personnel committee crafted faculty line profiles and job advertisements during the spring semester and we began the application review and hiring process during last fall. We began interviewing candidates early spring semester in 2006 and by April had concluded the hiring process. Our four new faculty members are Assistant Professors Patricia Erhkamp and Morgan Robertson and Associate Professors Michael Samers and Andrew Wood. Look for brief biographic profiles on these folks elsewhere in the Newsletter. We are also grateful to Matthew Zook who, given the absence of colleagues on the Personnel Committee, accepted the responsibility for scheduling all of the candidate interviews.
Second, three of our faculty won major awards this year: Thomas Leinbach, Jonathan Phillips, and Susan Roberts.
In April, Professor Leinbach received the College of Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor Award. This is the College’s highest award and is given to a Social Science faculty member once every three years. The award acknowledges Tom’s record of exceptional original research and scholarship—including his stellar record in obtaining grants to support his research—his high quality teaching and advising, and his outstanding service to the department, college and university, and to the discipline of geography.
Professor Jonathan Phillips received the University of Kentucky Research Professor Award, one of two given campus wide annually. Professor Phillips is an extraordinary scholar who has compiled an exemplary publication record. He joined our department five years ago as a Research Challenge Trust Fund professor to start the department’s new graduate program in physical geography. Jonathan’s early research program focused on coastal geomorphology, and his subsequent work demonstrates an appreciation for the delicate balance between theoretical foundation, empirical evidence, and curiosity-driven field exploration. He has made outstanding contributions in the areas of fluvial geomorphology, soils geography, coastal geomorphology, weathering geomorphology, landscape evolution, and environmental modeling. Jonathan’s greatest impact has been in theoretical geomorphology especially in the areas of complex systems, nonlinear dynamics, and chaotic instability in earth surface systems. This award includes a semester of release time so that he can conduct research and write full time.
Professor Susan Roberts won the William B. Sturgill Award which is given by the University annually in recognition of outstanding contributions to graduate education. Dr. Roberts’ graduate teaching and advising efforts are dynamically linked to her research program, which involves a long-standing interest in global-scale economic and political geography, on the one hand, and a concern for theoretically informed scholarship on the other. Blending these two perspectives, Dr. Roberts has placed herself within an elite group of international scholars who are examining the structure and functional impact of the international financial system, especially offshore financial centers, and who are producing the inaugural essays that will bolster this newly emerging sector of economic and political geography. The regional context for her research has focused on the Caribbean with logical extensions to the Americas and Northern Europe. Her current research includes issues of finance and the role of NGOs in development in Mexico, a program that is supported by a significant NSF award that she received with Co-PI John Paul Jones, Department Head at the University of Arizona. Dr. Roberts’ service as a long-term member of our Graduate Committee and as Director of Graduate Studies has been exemplary in the development of the Department’s graduate program. She has been a high-energy recruiter of first rank graduate students. Since she accepted an offer of a tenure track position here in 1992 she has taught thirteen different graduate seminars and has conducted over thirty independent study courses in which she has supervised graduate students in Geography and other graduate programs, including Social Theory and Women’s Studies. Each of these awards included a significant cash stipend. We believe that this is the first time that these three major awards have been given to faculty in the same department during the same year.
Third, the Department received funding from the Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences and the Executive Vice President for Research to purchase equipment to outfit a new, state-of-the-art Geographical Information Systems lab in the White Hall Classroom Building, and a multi-station GIS research lab in our Gyula Pauer Lab in Miller Hall. During the coming year, we will also be adding a part time technical staff member to maintain the lab and monitor student lab use.
Additional recognitions include Professor Tad Mutersbaugh, who received a Fulbright Fellowship to continue his fieldwork on organic coffee production in Oaxaca, Mexico. Faculty on sabbatical leave this year included Susan Roberts and Richard Schein who spent a semester in Australia working with colleagues at the University of Newcastle. Next year’s sabbatical awardees include Gary Shannon and Anna Secor.
Professors Susan Roberts, Rich Schein, Alice Turkington, and Matthew Zook organized this past year’s faculty and student exchange activities with the University of Nottingham and the National University of Ireland Maynooth. Professor Nick Clifford of the University of Nottingham visited our department for a week as part of our faculty and student exchange program with Nottingham. Nick is a specialist in eco-hydraulics, river management, and river restoration. He presented a lecture on his experiences in combining field survey techniques and numerical simulation and led a class in the physical geography seminar taught by Alice Turkington. Professor Louise Crewe of Nottingham will be a guest of the department during August of 2006. Fall semester, Maynooth undergrads xxx and xxx took classes and wrote research papers under the guidance of departmental faculty. Two more students from National University will be attending UK and taking classes in the department this coming year.
The department celebrated the 34nd Annual Ellen Churchill Semple Day at Spindletop Hall in April, our favorite spring venue for departmental social events. This year, Professor Craig Colton, the Carl O. Sauer Professor at Louisiana State University, was our honored Semple Day Speaker. Craig completed his PhD at Syracuse University in 1984. He spent the next decade tracking relict hazardous waste sites across Illinois. His experience with state government launched him into a brief career with PHR Environmental Consultants in the Washington, DC area. In 2000, he returned to his home state of Louisiana where he joined the faculty of LSU. His latest book, An Unnatural Metropolis: Wresting New Orleans from Nature, made a timely appearance in early 2005. The book provides an account of the city’s longstanding struggles with a host of environmental challenges, including hurricanes. In 2006, the book won the J. B. Jackson Prize, the Association of American Geographers’ highest award for published books. In the wake of Hurricane Katrina in late August, 2005, Craig was pulled into the public spotlight and provided geographical perspectives on the disaster to NPR, the New York Times, CNN, BBC, NBC, Time, the Washington Post, and other media. The title of Craig’s evening Ellen Semple Lecture was “A Historical Geographer Runs into the Present at Hurricane Velocity.”
Our faculty continues to be exceptionally active in research and publication with a number of journal articles and books either published or accepted for publication this past year. Faculty published articles in A Handbook of Appalachia: An Introduction to the Region, AAG Newsletter, Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Appalachian Journal, Asian Geographer, Earth Surface Processes and Landforms, Economic Geography, Environment and Planning A, Geografiska Annaler, Geographical Review, Geomorphology, Kentucky Places and Spaces, Journal of Contemporary European Studies, Journal of Rural Studies, Journal of the Society of Architectural History, Science and Technology, Social and Cultural Geography, The Annual Review of Information, and World Development. Departmental faculty are also very active in editing special journal issues, as Tad Mutersbaugh did this year. Of special note here is Tom Leinbach’s ongoing editorship of the interdisciplinary journal Growth & Change. Tom had been co-editor of G & C, with a colleague in the College of Business, for several years. Under Tom’s guidance the journal has become a highly respected outlet for a wide range of scholarly papers that relate generally to issues of local and regional development. Blackwell Publishers Company was sufficiently impressed with Tom’s work to purchase the journal and has asked Tom to continue as sole editor under the new ownership.
Professor Anna Secor served admirably as Director of Graduate Studies this past year. We are all grateful to Anna for her stellar performance in this taxing position (and all this in addition to becoming a new mother).
We have supplemented our regular faculty through the appointment of several adjunct faculty members who will be working with faculty and students on research projects and serving on graduate student advisory committees. These include William Andrews, research specialist with the Kentucky Geological Survey; Ted Grossardt, associate director of the College of Engineering’s Transportation Center; Patrick Lawless, research associate at Naprogenix, Inc., in Lexington; Dan Marion, research hydrologist with the US Forest Service; David Zurick, professor of geography at Eastern Kentucky State University; Liz Natter, Lexington attorney with an interest in environmental issues; and Lynn Phillips, Lexington resident and planner.
On January 5th, departmental colleagues were saddened by the news that long-time departmental faculty member William Withington had died. Bill was born in Hawaii in 1924 and joined the department in 1955 after receiving his PhD in geography at Northwestern University. He retired from his departmental faculty position in 1989. Bill and his wife Anne, established the Withington Endowment Fund (official name) with a major monetary gift to the department. Their initial contribution was matched by the University and attracted additional contributions from several faculty and alumni so that the Fund’s balance has accrued to $160,000. It was Anne Withington’s wish that the fund be used to support departmental graduate student field research and student travel to professional meetings.
During the past year, the Department has hired two new office staff assistants. Ms. Raegan Wilson joined the department in as staff assistant in 2005. Raegan is originally from Corbin, Kentucky, and she obtained her BA degree from Transylvania University. In 2006, the department hired Lori Tyndall as the new office business manager, replacing Julie Mellon who moved to the dean’s office. Lori’s professional work experiences includes staff positions at the Division of Cardiology in the College of Medicine here at UK.
Karl Raitz
Fall, 2006 |
