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UHCL maps out new geography program
by Kevin Street
To help launch this degree plan, Gil Grosvenor, chairman of the National Geographic Society, was
on campus to promote the geography program.
"There has been a real need for this (degree) for quite a while,"said Dr. Jeff Lash, assistant
professor of geography. "We live in the fourth largest city in the nation, and until this past
September there was not a geography degree program offered in the greater Houston area."
Although it was not announced as an official degree plan until earlier this semester, many students
have already been taking geography courses at junior colleges and UH-Clear Lake. This university has
offered geography classes for the past eight years, but a growing job market for geography graduates
has increased the need for such a program.
"In the past, there was not a lot of interest in this type of degree except for educational
purposes, but it has expanded,"said Dennis Spuck, dean of the School of Education. "Now employers are
seeking geography graduates to fill positions in the oil and petrochemical fields."
Geography graduates can seek numerous employment opportunities, such as transportation planners,
marketing researchers or environmental managers. Each of these fields incorporates the basic
fundamentals of geography.
The three different degree tracks that students can follow are geography education, human geography
and physical geography. Geography education is for students pursuing careers in education, while both
human and physical geography courses focus on the connections between people and their environments.
The physical geography degree plan includes several geographic information systems courses that
will be offered next semester. The GIS courses are intensive labs in which students use computer
software to study detailed maps that collect and analyze a broad range of information about the
earth's surface.
"We envision a high demand for the GIS courses that will be problem-solving and critical- thinking
classes,"Lash said.
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