The Geography Education Networking Initiative for Underrepresented Scholars (GENIUS) is a three-day workshop for rising third- and fourth-year students who identify as part of a racially underrepresented group to receive support and mentoring in preparing to apply to graduate programs in geography. During the workshop, participants will be mentored in preparing application materials that they can use to apply to graduate programs.
The workshop will help students begin to form networks that they can use to navigate their professional careers. Attendees will have the opportunity to network with peers and scholars from across the United States and Canada. At the end of the workshop, participants will have created an email introduction to send to potential advisers, a curriculum vitae that documents their achievements, and a personal statement for graduate school applications. Students also will have identified up to five programs that they are interested in applying to. Finally, a portion of the workshop will focus on identifying funding to help defray the costs of graduate applications.
Students will work closely with mentors, Penn State Geography faculty, and current graduate students to understand how to apply to graduate school and what grad school is all about. The workshop will include opportunities for both group and individual mentoring as well as the option for students to work together on graduate application materials.
Read about the 2023 GENIUS Workshop from Penn State News
Students will receive travel support, hotel rooms in State College, and some meals while attending.
Successful applicants to GENIUS will demonstrate that they:
Emily Rosenman is an urban and economic geographer who researches the connections between finance, urbanization, and inequality. Her work is motivated by the aim of understanding relationships that produce both wealth and impoverishment, with particular attention to the uneven geographies of financialization and racialization that characterize contemporary urban life.
Joshua Inwood is a professor of geography and holds a joint appointment with the Rock Ethics Institute. His work is focused on race, processes of racialization, racial capital, and the Civil Rights Movement and the U.S. South.
Undergraduate scholars interested in attending GENIUS, should use the form below to submit the following application materials at the bottom of this page.
GENIUS 2024 Workshop
GENIUS 2023 Workshop
If you have questions about the workshop or applying, please contact Josh Inwood (jfi6@psu.edu) or Emily Rosenman (ekr5260@psu.edu).
Emily Rosenman
Joshua Inwood