The departmental program emphasizes geographic concepts, techniques, skills and their application to the solution of environmental, land-use and public planning problems. There are four tracks in the undergraduate geography major: Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Environmental/ Land-Use Planning, Geographic Information Science and General Geography. The department also offers a major in Earth Science, including a track in Earth Science Secondary Education. An internship program is available for interested students. As a student-centered department, the faculty concentrates on high-quality teaching and advising and active engagement in undergraduate research while maintaining an open-door policy.

The department has grown considerably during the past decade. We have added several new faculty positions and our number of majors has approximately doubled. The department also recently developed a graduate program in Geographic Information Systems and Public Administration.

An overwhelming majority of the department’s graduates obtain jobs directly related to their degree. Many of our graduates have also gone on to graduate school in geography (usually with full assistantships) with several obtaining their doctoral degree.

High-Tech and Hands-On Learning Opportunities

The department has well-equipped “smart” classrooms and modern laboratory facilities. We maintain our own computer laboratory, equipped with 42 XP workstations, color and laser printers, plotters, scanners, and digitizing tablets. We have site licenses for ESRI and Manifold GIS products and have a variety of digital image processing and cartographic drawing software. The department has laboratories dedicated to physical geography for instruction and research, a 12,000- sheet topographic map collection, a server devoted to spatial data, and a large rock and mineral collection. The department’s highly active student group, The Geographic Society, is available for extracurricular participation. SU students’ knowledge of economic and urban geography recently led them to victory as the championship team at the first regional World Geography Bowl sponsored by the Middle Atlantic Division of the Association of American Geographers.

“Geography is both science and art” — H.C. Darby, 1962