Geography
Geography's rapidly changing technological tools are adapted to the study of human-environment interactions. Today's geographer's use multiple data arrays obtained from satellites and other airborne remote-sensing units to map areas around the globe. These tools supply the details needed for environmental, meteorological, population, and land use analyses and predictive modeling. Learn more about the Department of Geography by visiting www.geo.cmich.edu
Fall 2008 Highlights
- Geography professors Michael Libbee and Mark Francek have been recognized by The National Council on Geographic Education for their commitment to innovative teaching. The national honors represent the only time two faculty from the same institution have been acknowledged in the same year.
- Professor Bin Li participated in the earthquake damage estimation and mitigation effort in China. Li chaired the special session on the Application of GIS in Mitigation and Estimation of Earthquake Damage at the International Conference in Geoinformatics held June 28-29, 2008 in Guangzhou, China.
- In the 2008 IMAGIN Student Poster & Paper Competition, CMU students dominated the event by winning the first, second, and third places in the undergraduate poster competition, and first and second places in the graduate paper competition.
Erika Espeland, currently a graduate student in GIS, won first place with her poster "3D Mapping for the Cloud Forest in Tropical Areas." Joe Pomerville, a senior with a concentration in GIS, won second place for his project, "Identifying the Most Suitable Habitat for the Florida Panther." Ken Robertson, a junior with a concentration in GIS, took third place for his cartographic project, "African American Migration in the United States."
Biology graduate students Maxwell Field and Heather Stricker won first and second places in the graduate paper competition. Max's award winning paper was "Common Loon Habitat Modeling in Northern Lower Michigan Using Binary Logistic Regression." Heather's research was about "Monitoring Wolf Recovery in Michigan's Northern Lower Peninsula."
Dr. Xiaolan Wu, a geography professor specialized in GIS, was the faculty advisor for Erika Espeland and Joe Pomerville, as well as for Maxwell Field and Heather Stricker. Dr. David Patton, a geography professor specialized in GISci and Cartography, was the faculty advisor for Ken Robertson.
The competition took place on January 24, 2008 at Schoolcraft College in Livonia, Mich., where a panel of judges from the industry and academic communities selected the winners. All finalists received free lodging, paid conference registration (to the IMAGIN annual conference), a one-year IMAGIN membership, as well as monetary awards. IMAGIN, standing for Improving Michigan's Access to Geographic Information Networks, is a professional society for geospatial technology in Michigan.
- Ken Robertson, a student in the Accelerated M.S. in GIS program, is one of two recipients of this year's Marble-Boyle Undergraduate Achievement Awards in Geographic Science, awarded to students with significant achievement in bridging computing science and GIS. The award is a result of a nationwide competition. Robertson will be offered a summer internship at ESRI, the largest GIS software company, and is now eligible for an additional research fellowship at MicroGIS Foundation for Spatial Analysis in Lausanne, Switzerland.
