New geography major ‘off to a good start’

Seven GCSU students, three upper-level professors, one giant world. Seven students have declared themselves geography majors since it’s Spring-semester creation.

Before its approval from the Board of Regents, the department only offered a minor for students that were interesting in geography. Since there was no geography major to be offered, many students who wanted to pursue a geography degree were faced with the decision of having to transfer to a different school or change their majors. The Department of History, Geography and Philosophy added the major last Spring.

Doug Oetter, associate professor of geography and coordinator of the geography program, expressed that many students did in fact transfer to different schools because the major was not available to them.

“We had dozens of students over the years request that we create a geography degree, and there were at least six students who transferred out of Georgia College to other state schools with a geography program,” Oetter said. “We didn’t want to lose any more students because we couldn’t provide them with a quality education in geography.”

Now that the major has been added to the university’s curriculum, students have decided to change their majors. Ryan Cook, a junior geography major, was previously a history major and after taking an introductory geography course with Charles Fahrer, the associate professor of geography, he changed his major.

“I took his intro to human geography course and discovered that it was the stuff I liked about history,” Cook said. “I like history because you find out where people came from. Geography is in a way looking at how where they came from affects where they are.”

There are currently three professors on campus who teach the upper-level courses required to complete the major. Charles Fahrer lectures the political and military geography, Amy Sumpter teaches cultural, urban, and economic geography, and Oetter instructs the physical, environmental and techniques classes.

Jordan Eisner, a senior geography major, said he always knew that he wanted to graduate with a geography degree. His degree path has changed from business management to history and now finally to geography.

“I took two intro level geography classes with Dr. Fahrer my freshman year and I really enjoyed both of them,” Eisner said. “I stuck with business, but after one day of accounting I knew I wanted to do something different. I went to Dr. Fahrer’s office and switched that day.”

Today, there is one student who has received a bachelor’s degree in geography and there are many others in the process of obtaining their degrees. Fahrer believes the major is off to a great start after only being a part of the curriculum for two semesters.

“I got an e-mail from a student today thinking about the geography major so it’s constantly a circulating number,” Fahrer said. “It’s getting off to a good start.”

Posted by Lauren Davidson on Nov 5 2010. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.