Department Overview

Geography was first taught on the site of the present campus under the auspices of the Milwaukee Normal School. Interest on the part of students and faculty members resulted in the creation of the Department of Geography on July l, 1956, coincident with the creation of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. In 1959, the University undertook the task of building a graduate school. The Masters Degree Program in Geography became one of the first to receive approval in 1963. The doctoral program in Geography, inaugurated officially in the spring of 1966, was among the first three Ph.D. programs.

The Department of Geography offers bachelor's and master's programs of study across a range of systematic, regional, and technical fields, and an innovative Ph.D. program focused on urban environments. The department's strengths lie in three areas of expertise that are incorporated into the programs at all levels. These areas are:

Urban Development: This area primarily emphasizes the role of economic systems as well as cultural and social forces that shape the landscape and dynamics of urban areas. Courses examine such issues as urban growth and change, race and ethnicity in the city, cultural and physical aspects of urban planning process, and the geography of urban political decision-making.

Physical Geography and Environmental Studies: This area addresses the interactions among natural forms and processes on the earth's surface and human connections with those natural phenomena. Course work in this general area discusses the distribution and analysis of earth surface landforms and processes (geomorphology), soils (pedology), plants and animals (biogeography) and long-term atmospheric patterns (climatology). Emphasis is placed on the relationship between the physical environment and people, incorporating studies of, for example, natural hazards, conservation, and environmental change, and paying particular attention to the manifestations of these relationships and processes in urban environments.

International Interests: Department faculty members have varied international interests and experience, for example, in Africa, Canada, the Caribbean, China, Latin America, South Asia, and Western Europe.

In addition to these departmental strengths, individual faculty members apply their expertise in topics such as GIS and remote sensing to problems of the city.

While the master's program offers a more traditional structure within which students can strengthen their knowledge of the discipline and one or more of its sub-fields, the department's unique Ph.D. program is designed to be especially attractive to forward-looking students interested in urban environments who seek a flexible, versatile, 21st century graduate education with a strong emphasis on interdisciplinary. The Ph.D. program's urban-environmental theme is inclusive and encompassing of processes and problems associated with the intersection of human and natural environments, strongly focused on "the city" as the entity of engagement. The program breaks with longstanding tradition in the field of geography in stressing a balance between specialize analytical research and synthetic research, between traditional academic research and community engagement, and between research and teaching. It relies heavily on Geographic Information Science (GIS) as a research tool and as an organizing framework.