Mission Statement

The College of Arts and Letters offers 16 bachelor's degrees and five master's among eight departments that prepare a growing number of graduates for a wide range of career paths. Discover your musical voice, dissect language and literature, debate strategies for fighting crime ... and more.

What is Geography?

"Geography is the science of place. Its vision is grand, its view panoramic. It sweeps the surface of the Earth, charting the physical, organic and cultural terrains, their areal differentiation, and their ecological dynamics with humankind. Its foremost tool is the map." --Leonard Kristalka

"Geography has no subject matter that is special unto itself. Geographers focus on anything and everything but relate their investigations to place and space." --B. L. Turner II

Geography is basically a curiosity about our home, the surface of the earth. If you like to travel or have a love of maps you have strong geographical tendencies.

Students in the Urban Spaces class meet with the CSU President Brown to learn about CSU's urban redevelopment project in downtown Columbus.

Popular conceptions of geography usually portray the discipline as simple facts about places ("Where is Madagascar?" "What's the capital of Iowa?"). However, a serious study of geography is much more. Geography involves a very dynamic interrelationship between and among historical, environmental, social, economic and political components. Geography students draw upon many disciplines and need to be able to read and write with clarity and insight in order to address geographic problems.

Central to geography at the college level are questions of explanation: Why is something where it is? Why are places what they are? How do we interact with our environment? The CSU Geography Minor reflects these fundamental geographic questions and the curriculum includes a regional course (World Regional Geography), topical courses (Cultural Geography and Urban Geography), and environmental courses (Physical Geology, Climatology, and Environmental Resource Management).

Students take numerous field trips as part of their course work; they develop their own field research projects; and are involved in a long-term, multi-year study of urban redevelopment in downtown Columbus. Student research has been published in local journals, as part of a web research project, and is also housed in the CSU historical archives. Students develop an e-portfolio of their work throughout the minor which they reflect upon as part of their capstone course.

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Why get a Geography Minor?

World Regional Geography "World Without Borders" class takes a field trip to Emory University's Museum of Art, Atlanta.

The Geography Minor is useful to all students interested in broadening their knowledge of the natural and socio-economic systems of the world. The Geography Minor is an important addition to many majors, in particular Education, History,

Business, Biology, Chemistry, Sociology and Geology. Geography is interdisciplinary

and employers look for geographers with holistic problem-solving skills. Geographers, unlike other disciplines, study human society and the physical environment and they are valued employees because we are trained to understand the complexity and interconnections between society and the environment. Employers seek geographically trained employees for their analytical problem-solving abilities.

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What are the requirements to minor in Geography?

Cultural Landscape students take a tour of the Eagle and Phenix condo project to understand urban redevelopment

A. Prerequisite courses: Geography 1101, Physical Geology 1121.

B. Geography Minor: (15 semester hours) including GEOG 3556, GEOG 5128, GEOG

4000 and nine hours from the following courses:

GEOL 3275, GEOL 5135, GEOL 5255 and ENVR 5225 and other courses with the consent of the Director of the Geography Minor,
Dr. Amanda Rees.

All courses used to satisfy the minor requirement must be passed with a grade of "C" or better.

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How do you know if you want to be a geographer?

1. Are you curious about places?
If so, geography channels this interest into a rigorous study of the makeup of places and what makes them tick.

2. Do you like to study maps?
The geographer's first inclination is to put information on a map in order to see how it looks spatially.

3. Do you prefer the window seat on airplanes? Geography tries to explain the constantly changing patterns of human activity and natural phenomena on the landscape.

4. Are you interested in foreign areas?
Many geographers specialize in a particular part of the world such as Latin America, Europe, Asia, or Africa.

5. Do you like to work outside?
Many geographers obtain their basic data from field investigation in environments that range from wilderness areas to cities.

6. Are you a problem solver?

As scientists, geographers are naturally curious about how the world is arranged. They ask lots of questions about why things are located the way they are and then they try to answer those questions.

7. Are you good at seeing connections among seemingly unrelated processes?

One of geography's strengths is its ability to integrate ideas about human behavior, social institutions, and the natural environment.

8. Can you adapt to rapid technological change?
Geography has been buffeted by monumental changes in technology. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) have revolutionized the way geographers collect, store, analyze, and present spatial information.

9. Do you try to see the big picture?

Geographers look at how places interact with each other, and how they are influenced by larger, more global forces. Geographers think big and are often involved in planning!

10. Are you interested in connections between people and the environment?

Geographers see the world as the human habitat, one that we have transformed and that has transformed us.

If you answer yes to a majority of these questions, you may have a bright future in geography.

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