Distressing and incessant media tales of world hunger, declining environmental quality, hazardous-waste disposal, crime, urban housing, famine and overpopulation, urban transportation nightmares, ethnic and nationalist conflicts, and so on are not given to one-dimensional solutions and thus seem intractable. Geographers, however, are trained to approach and begin to solve these issues from a wide variety of perspectives. Spatial analysis—the study of where things are, how and why they got there, and what may affect that location in the future—is a powerful tool which can serve as a common denominator in thinking about complex social, political, economic, and cultural controversies . In addition to providing our students with the analytical tools and habits of mind to assess these problems, we also encourage our students to combine classroom study with internships, Service Learning experiences, apprenticeships, and independent research to develop an integrated learning experience. This learning experience not only thus gives students critical and analytical skills, but also offers a sense of hope that these daunting problems can be solved and that individuals can make a difference.

By combining these extra-curricular engagements with coursework, majoring in Geography "makes real" such contemporary issues as migration, inequality, world hunger, economic development, and land use decisions.

Geographers explore the linkages between key patterns and processes changing the world daily:

Citizenship and accountability to place: community, democracy

Scale (local to global), nation state, regional, urban-rural, etc.

Movement, migration and borders; disease; trade and transportation

Access to goods and services; social justice, identity, location, opportunity & constraint

Sustainable development and natural resource use

Globalization: information, transnationalism, restructuring, neo-liberalism

Representation: method, technology, epistemology, measurement, source & error, rhetoric

• International, Regional and Development Studies

This track concentrates on patterns and processes of 1) human behavior; 2) political institutions, and, 3) social relationships, with a special emphasis on the ways these forces shape the geographic organization of society. Courses combine an interest in both locational knowledge (where people and their activities are located) and theoretical understanding (why they are located where they are).

Issues include the location and migration of people, the structure of cities, urban mass transportation, the growth of suburbs, changing workforce locations and demographics, the distribution of health care services (and other public services), and the importance of political boundaries, just to name a few. Emphasis is on cities and regions in North America and the developing world. In addition to a basic understanding of broad relationships, considerable emphasis is placed on contemporary urban, social, and political problems often using the Seattle region as a laboratory.

This track concentrates on the spatial distribution of goods, services, and other aspects of economic activities. Main topics include: regional economic development and interdependence; the locational implications of economic and organizational restructuring; the role of innovation in the processes of industrialization; patterns of marine- and air-transportation, international trade and transnational corporations; regional and spatial analysis of economic activities in the private and public sectors, including the explosive growth of the service sector; resource use and environmental management issues; urban economic problems and processes; industrial interdependencies; and, policy implications of all of these issues at all geographic scales, from local to global.

• Geographic Information Systems .

Analytical skills developed in this track include data gathering , processing, analyzing; proficiency in spatial data definition and classification; database and spreadsheet manipulation; information literacy; critical thinking strategies for geographical problem-solving; GIS project management and workgroup collaboration; project development and presentation; bringing visualization techniques together with analysis and data management; testing various components of data quality and preparation of data quality report; utilizing applications from several geographic interests and concentrations (land use, transportation, resource analysis, etc.) ; data analysis with GIS operations and models; understanding of a wide range of geographic data (socio-economic, environmental, transportation, etc.); ability to prepare maps that communicate effectively; ability to work with census data; ability to use land use data (parcels, zoning, etc.)

• Society and Environment

The Geography curriculum offers a rich diversity of perspectives on the relationship between society and environment. The examination, analysis and interpretation of this relationship is one of the foundations of the discipline and continues to be a vital area for geographic inquiry. This undergraduate emphasis examines the key debates on the causes and outcomes of environmental change and degradation and the paths to sustainable development; the collection of quantitative and qualitative data in diverse contexts; use of data in the formulation of human-environment interaction models; and historical and contemporary societal responses to environmental degradation, health problems and resource consumption. There are four areas of focus : resource geography, cultural and political ecology, health and the environment, and GIS and resource analysis. The aim of this undergraduate emphasis is to provide students with a grounding in the central conceptual approaches to understanding and explaining the society-environment relationships across differing geographic scales and contexts , as well as gaining knowledge of the methodologies required in resource analysis and environmental management.

Seen as complementary, these courses provide a coherent and integrated program of study assessing the complex inter-relationships between social dynamics and environments. Special focus is placed on questions of scale in analyzing change at the local, regional, national, and global levels, and on understanding and explaining the interactions between ecological processes, environmental transformation and social processes and transformations in impoverished and affluent societies the world over.

Ability to explain and critique theories of global climate change

Through case studies, connect abstract arguments about food systems to particular places, and social and economic processes

This track concentrates on patterns and processes of 1) human behavior; 2) political institutions, and, 3) social relationships, with a special emphasis on the ways these forces shape the geographic organization of society. Courses combine an interest in both locational knowledge (where people and their activities are located) and theoretical understanding (why they are located where they are).

Issues include the location and migration of people, the structure of cities, urban mass transportation, the growth of suburbs, changing workforce locations and demographics, the distribution of health care services (and other public services), and the importance of political boundaries, just to name a few. Emphasis is on cities and regions in North America and the developing world. In addition to a basic understanding of broad relationships, considerable emphasis is placed on contemporary urban, social, and political problems often using the Seattle region as a laboratory.