GEONEWS Newsletter of the IUPUI Geography Department Spring 1998

Upcoming Events

Please be sure to keep Saturday, May 2 from 3-6 p.m. open for a Departmental Picnic for graduating seniors, alums, majors, minors, in fact just about anybody who loves geography. That includes being married to or dating a geographer. Our rain date will be May 9 at the same time. The picnic will be held at Garfield Park. Our own Bob Beck has drawn a map in case you are unfamiliar with the area. Enter via the main entrance, off Southern Avenue. The Department will provide meat to grill, soft drinks, paper plates and plastic ware. Please bring a side dish to share with the rest of the group. RSVP by April 27 to Geography secretary Joyce Haibe (CA 213; 274-8877; geogdept@iupui.edu).

The Geography Club is planning its last trip of the season: the annual rafting trip to West Virginia May 15-17. If you are interested in going along, contact Ron Raney (rjraney@iupui.edu) or the Geography office (geogdept@iupui.edu or 274-8877). The Club will camp at the Mountain River Campgrounds, Hico, West Virginia, and raft on the Lower New River, using rafts provided by Mountain River Tours, Inc. The cost is $83.18.

Scholarship Fund

Our Alumni Scholarship Fund is growing slowly but steadily. Soon, we will have enough principal to start awarding an annual scholarship to an outstanding major. If you would like to give a hand to some up-and-coming geography students, please contact the Geography office for more information.

Student News

Please join us in congratulating our December graduates, Nicalaus Christiansen, Katherine Gullick, and Gregory Stucker. Tentatively scheduled to graduate in May are Clifford Chapman, Kim Cronin, Jennifer Diekhoff, Daniel Johnson, Richard (Fred) Metcalf, Ron Raney, Jason Smith, Kenneth Spencer, Allen Thompson, and Jason Tucker.

We are happy to announce that Allen Thompson is the department's Outstanding Senior and our nominee for the SLA Medal of Distinction. Major Heide Liessmann was one of two winners of the Cavanaugh Award this year.

News From Our Alumni

Craig Campbell (1984) graduated with a double major in geography and Spanish. He went on to the M.A. program at the University of Kentucky, teaching Spanish and introductory cartography while taking geography classes. In 1985, he was an intern for the Cartographic Division of the National Geographic Society and taught human and world geography at the University of Louisville, while finishing his M.A. thesis. After teaching for a short time at Old Dominion University in Virginia, he went on to get a Ph.D. in geography at the University of Kansas. He returned to IUPUI to teach two summers, developing a popular course about the cultural and environmental impact of the automobile. Craig is now an assistant professor at Youngstown State University, where he teaches courses in cartography and human geography (including the auto course).

Monte O'Neal (1991) received his M.A. in geography in 1994 from IU and is now working on a Ph.D. in agricultural systems management at Purdue. His sub-area is precision farming, which is very spatial. (Can anyone explain kriging?) He hopes to use the theory of neural networks to make site-specific (3 to 5 acres) fertilizer prescriptions based on weather data and management records, with 12 weather stations set up on a 480-acre farm. He says, "Thinking spatially is a worthwhile skill."

Dallas Dishman (1992) is living on the beach in Santa Monica, California, but says he seldom sees it, because he's trying to finish his last semester of Ph.D. course work in geography at the University of Southern California. After graduating from IUPUI, Dallas spent a year as curatorial assistant at the Indianapolis Children's Museum before moving to USC. There he completed an M.A. thesis titled "Digital Dissidents: The Formation of Gay Communities on the Internet," before entering the doctoral program. His Ph.D. work continues to focus on social theory and medical geography, particularly the social epidemiology of infectious diseases. He has written a chapter on hate crimes for the Atlas of California and hopes to have part of his M.A. thesis published in an upcoming edited volume. Dallas is a member of two specialty groups of the Association of American Geographers (Sexuality and Space, and Medical Geography) and has co-chaired the Gay, Lesbian, and Bi Graduate Assembly at USC for two years. Aside from periodic star sightings, he says, Los Angeles is just another big city with lots of things to see and lots of social problems to study.

After graduating from IUPUI in 1982, Pamela Moss went to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver for her M.A., which she completed in 1986. Pam then moved to Toronto, Canada, and worked as a geography and history textbook editor. Returning to academics, Pam earned a Ph.D. in geography from McMaster University, in Hamilton, Ontario, for a study of the labor process of franchise housekeeping services. She began teaching at the University of Victoria, British Columbia in 1992 and in 1997 was promoted to associate professor. Pam's research focuses on the geography of health care; her subjects include homecare workers and women diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis and chronic fatigue syndrome.

Faculty Highlight: Jeff Wilson

Jeff Wilson is our newest faculty member. Jeff recently finished a Ph.D. in geography at Indiana State University, where he specialized in analysis of landscape change from remotely sensed imagery. He will lead our program in spatial analysis, teaching courses in GIS, cartography, and remote sensing. In the fall Jeff will offer a new advanced GIS course. Plans are also in the works for a new graduate course in spatial analysis. This curriculum relies on the new Social Science Computer Lab, equipped with 24 Windows NT work stations sporting 21-inch color monitors and large processing and storage capabilities. The Lab also features a large-format color printer and state-of-the-art spatial analysis software, including ERDAS Imagine and Arc/View.

Jeff is in very good spirits these days because of his recent wedding to Rose Zupan. He and Rose are currently living in Terre Haute but looking for a house in a rural area near Indianapolis. Rose is a developmental therapist who works with children ages birth to three, specializing in developmental testing.

Please stop by the Department or come to the geography picnic to welcome Jeff to the Department.

Other Faculty News

Visiting Lecturer Cynthia Berlin is teaching a popular new course called Severe Weather, while completing a dissertation at Indiana State. We all feel extremely fortunate to have had Cynthia's expertise in climatology and physical geography during Catherine Souch's sabbatical leave and wish her the best of luck in what we are sure will be a stellar academic career.

Visiting professor Art Keiffer will return to Cuba for 10 days at the end of June with 6 students, one a Cuban expatriate who has not been back to Cuba since 1962. In July Art will once again be a judge at the Indianapolis International Winefest and in August will present a paper in Miami for the Association for the Study of the Cuban Economy.

Catherine Souch has just returned to the United States after a productive and very enjoyable six months in Australia and New Zealand. As part of her sabbatical leave she was a visiting scientist at Land and Water, a CSIRO government research lab in Canberra, Australia. She returns to full-time teaching at IUPUI in the fall.

Courses for Summer and Fall

This summer, we will offer courses not just on campus, but also in a new summer program at Glendale Shopping Center, including Bob Beck's popular House Types of North America and Art Keiffer's Explorations in Geography.

This fall, our upper-level courses will include Weather and Climate (taught by Catherine Souch), Biogeography (Tim Brothers), Latin America (Art Keiffer), Geography of North America and World of Maps (Bob Beck) and Political Geography (Tom Fedor), and a new Advanced GIS course (Jeff Wilson).

Whatever Happened To...?

We are lacking information for several grads. Does anyone know how to contact the following people? Sheila Anderson, Jeannie Benz, Alicia Butler, Terry Christie, Robert Comer, Phyllis Delmonte, Kathryn Engstrom, James Gabbert, Joseph Gwinn, Walt Holst, Edward Hopkins, Brad Kiefer, Brad Meeks, James Peotz, David Reifeis, Sonja Simpson, Amelia Venter, Virginia Wence.

Please keep us informed about changes of address and let us know what you're doing now. We will tell your story in a future newsletter. Send us your mailing address, place of employment and/or graduate school, and your e-mail address. We want to keep in touch! If you hear of jobs (part or full-time) we will be happy to tell students about them. You can also find us on the Web at http://www.iupui.edu/~geogdept/geog.html