Community Updates

Department departures and arrivals

• Trevor Birkenholtz joined the department in summer 2019 as an associate professor of geography.
• Jack Chang joined the department in spring 2019 as a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the ChoroPhronesis lab.
• Karen Cox accepted a position with Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center (Children’s Miracle Network) within the Office of University Development and Alumni Relations because she and her husband relocated to the Lancaster area.
• Cindy Etchison joined the department in spring 2019 as the new National Research Traineeship program coordinator for Landscape U.
• James Gaboardi joined the department in fall 2019 as a postdoctoral researcher with Christopher Fowler.
• Panagiotis Giannakis joined the department in summer 2019 as an assistant teaching professor with the John A. Dutton e-Education Institute.
• Helen Greatrex joined the department in summer 2019 as an assistant professor of geography and statistics.
• Lucas Harris completed his Ph.D. and is now a postdoctoral researcher with the Vegetation Dynamics lab.
• Carolynne Hultquist completed her Ph.D. and is now a postdoctoral researcher with the Geoinformatics and Earth Observation (GEO) lab.
• Ndivhuho Nemapate joined the department in fall 2019 as a visiting scholar.
• Andrea Rishworth joined the department in fall 2019 as a postdoctoral researcher with the HELIX lab.
• Emily Rosenman joined the department in summer 2019 as an assistant professor of geography.
• Pejman Sajjadi joined the department in spring 2019 as a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the ChoroPhronesis lab.
• Mamma Sawaneh was a visiting scholar from The Gambia in spring 2019 working with Erica Smithwick.
• Luke Trusel joined the department in summer 2019 as an assistant professor.
• Manzhu Yu joined the department in summer 2019 as an assistant professor of geography.
• Xi Zhu joined the department in spring 2019 as a postdoctoral researcher affiliated with the GeoVISTA Center.

 

Alumni

• John Frederick ’78 published a new book, Winding Roads: A Bicyclist’s Journey through Life and America.
• Lori Cohn Safer ’79 is the 2019 president of the Seattle Chapter of the Appraisal Institute, and a content reviewer for the Appraisal Institute’s recently published book, Real Property Valuation in Condemnation.
• Wayne Brew ’81 published two articles in the 2018 issue of the journal Pioneer America Society Transactions (PAST), a publication of the International Society for Landscape, Place & Material Culture, from his sabbatical road trip from Montgomery County Community College in Pennsylvania last year.
• Phil Dennison ‘97 was appointed chair of the Department of Geography at the University of Utah.
• Kirk Goldsberry ’99 published a new book, SprawlBall: A Visual Tour of the New Era of the NBA, about the evolution of basketball and the analytics driving it.
• Stephanie Campbell-Flohr ’02 accepted a new position as research project manager with the Center for Health Care and Policy Research at Penn State.
• Corene Matyas ’05g was named Undergraduate Teacher of the Year for the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at the University of Florida.
• Trieste Lockwood ’08 was profiled in Style Weekly, an alternative weekly newspaper published in Richmond, Virginia.
• Katherine Meckler ’14, a captain in the United States Air Force, received the 2019 Lt. Michael P. Murphy Award in Geospatial Intelligence.
• Chelsea (Gilliam) Nestel ’13 was interviewed for a CNN feature article, “The future of maps: Cartography in the 21st century.”
• Siddharth Pandey ’14, CSMCCEP, was promoted to associate at Dewberry. Pandey had been an assistant production manager in the company’s geospatial group. He is currently pursuing a master’s degree in professional studies in geographic information systems at the University of Maryland, College Park.
• Rachel Passmore ’14 graduated from Columbia University with a master of public health (MPH) degree. She is the project director at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine on  a two-year National Institutes of Health-funded study on developmental disabilities in the Bronx.
• Jase Bernhardt ’16g was awarded the 2018 American Association of State Climatologists’ Dissertation Medal in Applied Climatology, for his article “A comparison of daily temperature-averaging methods: Spatial variability and recent change for the CONUS,” which was published in February 2018 issue of the Journal of Climate.
• Whitney Broussard ’17g MGIS had his capstone project highlighted in the article, “Marshland survey uses aerial imagery and mapping technology,” which was published in the September 2018 issue of the Point of Beginnings magazine.

 

Students

 

• Megan Baumann was awarded a DDRI Award, titled “Doctoral Dissertation Research: Social-Environmental Feedbacks Between the Use and Governance of Water and Soil in Dryland Irrigation Megaprojects” from the National Science Foundation’s Geography and Spatial Sciences Program.
• Kelsey Brain, Eden Kinkaid, and Nari Senanayake had the article “The podcast-as-method?: Critical reflections on using podcasts to produce geographic knowledge” published in theApril 2019 Geographical Review Special Issue: Fieldwork in Geography.
• Sara Cavallo won the 2019 Supporting Women in Geography Nancy Brown Geography Community Service Award.
• Emily Domanico won an American Association of Geographers Cartography Specialty Group Master’s Thesis Research Grant for her proposal “Characterizing Map Use in Public Transit Control Centers: a qualitative study of dynamic map interfaces.”
• Zachary Goldberg reviewed the book, The One-Straw Revolution: An Introduction to Natural Farming, in the Graduate Journal of Food Studies.
• Joseph Grosso received Earth and Mineral Sciences Academy for Global Experience (EMSAGE) Laureate status.
• The new Supporting Women in Geography (SWIG) officers elected for 2019–20 are: Bradley Hinger, Elise Quinn, Izzy Taylor, and Jacklyn Weier.
• Weiming Hu’s entry was chosen as the third-place winner of the Physical Sciences & Mathematics category in the 34th annual Penn State Graduate Exhibition.
• Courtney Jackson was selected as an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Sloan Minority Ph.D. Program scholar.
• Curran McBride was selected one of the 2019 Esri Development Center Students of the Year.
• Andrew Patterson received the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences’ Ellen Steidle Achievement Award.
• Jamie Peeler received a National Geographic Support for Women and Dependent Care award to attend the 2019 International Association for Landscape Ecology World Congress in Milan, Italy.
• Hannah Perrelli co-authored the poster “Biomimetic Materials for Regenerative Bone Tissue Engineering,” which won the Outstanding Research Potential Award in the 2018 EMS Undergraduate Poster Exhibition.
• Michelle Ritchie received the George H. K. Schenck Teaching Assistant Award.
• Michelle Ritchie was awarded a Global Safety Office’s Wilderness First Aid Training Grant for her travel to Iceland.
• Marie Louise Ryan was awarded a Society of Woman Geographers Evelyn L. Pruitt National Fellowship for Dissertation Research.
• Saumya Vaishnava received an American Association of Geographers (AAG) Energy and Environment Specialty Group (EESG) Dissertation Data & Field Work Award.

 

Faculty and Staff

• Faculty in the Department of Geography received three post-doctoral positions from the Dean’s Fund for Postdoc-Facilitated Innovation:
  • Jenn Baka with Zhen Lei and Sekhar Bhattacharyya: “Understanding the Opioid Epidemic in the Appalachian Coal Region”
  • Alan Taylor with Susan Brantley: “Data-Driven Models to Assess Spatio-temporal Variability of Surface Water Quality in Coupled Human and Natural Systems at the Continental Scale”
  • Denice Wardrop with Raymond Najjar and Michael Hickner: “Fate and Transport of Microplastics in Chesapeake Bay to Inform a Standard of Degradability”
• The Department of Geography Green Team has been certified by the Sustainability Institute as a “Level Three Certified Green Paws Office.” Melissa Weaver is the team leader.
• The Department of Geography has been recognized for meeting the Integrated Safety Plan Phase 1 requirements by Penn State’s Department of Environmental Health and Safety.
• Qassim Abdullah received the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing Lifetime Achievement Award.
• Andrew Carleton was elected to serve on the University Graduate Council for a two-year term.
• Andrew Carleton was appointed as a science team member of the National Geographic’s Perpetual Planet Extreme Expedition: Everest 2019 project.
• Guido Cervone was promoted to professor.
• Guido Cervone received the 2019 University Consortium for Geographic Information Science Carolyn Merry Mentoring Award.
• Sarah Chamberlain was promoted to associate research professor.
• Karen Cox was the April Rock in Role Award winner, selected by the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences’ Staff Advisory Committee (SAC).
• James Detwiler was promoted to associate teaching professor.
• Lorraine Dowler was promoted to professor.
• Lorraine Dowler was awarded the  John T. Ryan Jr. Faculty Fellowship from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.
• Lorraine Dowler was awarded the 2019 Susan Hardwick Excellence in Mentoring Award from the American Association of Geographers.
• Chris Fowler’s fall 2018 GEOG 421: Population Geography class took first place in the Higher Ed division in the “Draw the Lines PA” contest statewide finals.
• Joshua Inwood was interviewed on The Debate program on the France 24 English news channel about white supremacy in the wake of the attack in Christchurch, New Zealand.
• Fritz Kessler and Sarah Battersby published a new book, Working with Map Projections: A Guide to their Selection, (CRC Press).
• Fritz Kessler served as president of The North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) 2018–19.
• Brian King was promoted to professor.
• Brian King was elected to serve as the Chair of the College of EMS Faculty Advisory Committee for a three-year term.
• Alexander Klippel received the 2019 E. Willard and Ruby S. Miller Faculty Fellowship from the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences.
• Alexander Klippel, Jiayan Zhao, Danielle Oprean, and Jack Chang were awarded best paper at the 2019 IEEE VR Fourth Workshop on K-12+ Embodied Learning through Virtual & Augmented Reality (KELVAR).
• Alan MacEachren was named a 2019 recipient of the Penn State Graduate Faculty Teaching Award.
• Anthony Robinson was promoted to associate professor.
• Karen Schuckman was promoted to associate teaching professor.
• Erica Smithwick received the College of Earth and Mineral Sciences’ Wilson Award for Excellence in Research.
• Erica Smithwick received a National Science Foundation Research Traineeship award for her project, “Landscape-U, Impactful Partnerships among Graduate Students and Managers for Regenerative Landscape Design” to support preparation of future leaders in the STEM workforce.