Ahh, it is good to be back in our temporary home.  The roof's fixed, we're chasing the mice away, and we're slowly unpacking the boxes we hastily packed last week.

Mary Washington Geography was well represented at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers (April 14-18) in DC.  Students, faculty, and at least some alumni are listed below:

Students

Timothy J. St. Onge: The Geography of Water Pollution in the Salton Sea

Its all over but the grading.  One of the department's more tumultuous semesters is ending well.  As graduation approaches, its time to recognize a few more members of our exceptional graduating class.

This year four seniors will graduate with Honors in Geography.  That is more than any other year that we have on record.  Below is the list of honors graduates with their thesis titles.

Timothy J. St. Onge: "MEDIA REPRESENTATIONS AND PLACE PERCEPTIONS OF STIGMATIZED NEIGHBORHOODS IN WASHINGTON, D.C."

We held our annual awards banquet a week ago (April 7). It was great to see a large number of students and a few alumni there.  As always we honored our majors' many accomplishments and presented awards to the top juniors and seniors.

Here's the line-up for the Geography Department's Annual Symposium on April 7.  Come and hear what Mary Washington Geographers are up to this year!

The Mary Washington led Virginia team won the World Geography Bowl competition at the Annual Meetings of the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers last week.  Led by captain Matthew Holden (2011) and coached by Joe Nicholas, Jackie Gallagher and Jackie Gallagher, 5 Mary Wash geographers and one graduate student from Virginia Tech defeated teams composed mostly of grarduate students from Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

We've now hosted four speakers in our 50th Anniversary Lecture series.  John McCarthy (1943), Carole Gallagher (1991), Louis Dean (1990), and LeAnne Carrouth (1984) have talked on subjects incuding planning, Northern Ireland, remote sening, and how geography is great preparation for a career in filmmaking.

This week we're proud to host Dr. Sarah Hinman (MWC 200) who will talk about how she incorporates GIS in her research in historical and medical geography.  The talk is at 6:00pm on Thursday, November 19 in Annex A 109.  All are weclome.

The upcoming (November 22-24) annual meeting of the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers (SEDAAG) will feature two sessions organized by Dawn Bowen to mark the 50th Anniversary of Geography at Mary Washington.

In these sessions, Mary Washington Geography alumni and current faculty will present ongoing research in both physical and human geography.  

We've been in Monrovia for a few weeks now.  The GIS lab is mostly set up, the maps have been filed back into their drawers, and the HVAC contractors are trying to get the inside humidity down below 80%.  All in all, it's working out ok.

If you are a member of the Geography Alumni Group on Facebook, check out Dawn's pictures of the deserted Monroe Hall and the inside of Monrovia.  If you aren't a member, I've copied some of them here:

On Saturday, April 18, 135 geographers came together to celebrate 50 years of Geography at Mary Washington.
Marshall Bowen and Sue Liebenow (1971)