Field Experience

Heading deep underground in an old anthracite mine, Jim Thorpe, PA, 2006

            Fieldwork is central to a geography education, providing the breadth of experience and perspective that is central to the discipline. The Department of Geography's field experience course typically extends over four days and entails research and presentations by all student participants. Lately, the course has been offered in the former coal-mining towns of Eastern Pennsylvania, as well as Detroit, Toronto, the Adirondacks, the Alleghanies and the Catskill Mountains.

            The Lisa M. Kuligowski Memorial Geography Fund, memorializing the tragic death of a Geography Alumna in 2004 generously supports this experience. A year and a half after the tragedy, Lisa’s friends began the healing process by channeling their grief into the creation of the Lisa M. Kuligowski Memorial Geography Fund to honor their friend and her beloved alma mater, from which she graduated in 1998. Please visit the website loveinlisa.org to find out more about Lisa and how to donate to this fund.

GEOG 375 Field Experience

This course provides an intensive field experience, during which students are required to use their powers of observation continuously. Emphasis is on the interpretation of the total physical and human landscape, and those factors which produce spatial variations in landscape pattern and structure. Evening meetings and field trips required.

Prerequisites: Geography major or permission of instructor. Credits: 1(1-0) Offered every semester.