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Undergraduate Program Description
The year 2004 marks the thirtieth anniversary of the Department of Geography at UCSB. The Department has grown over the past three decades and is now one of the crown jewels of UCSB. With 23 tenured faculty, 5 affiliated faculty, 22 administrative and 25 research staff, almost 100 graduate and 200 undergraduate students, the Department is not only among the largest geography departments in the country, it is also the highest ranked program within its discipline on campus, according to the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). The Department offers two undergraduate and two graduate degrees: Bachelor of Arts (BA) in Geography, Bachelor of Science (BS) in Physical Geography, Master of Arts (MA) in Geography and Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Geography. The majors are designed to provide a fundamental background for students seeking an interdisciplinary understanding of our planet and the varied human and natural systems that interrelate within it.
Majoring in Geography The Bachelor of Arts in Geography (BA) is an interdisciplinary program that offers students maximum flexibility with a minimum number of units. This major permits students the freedom of choosing their own path through various courses offered in the human, physical, and technical areas. The interdisciplinary nature of the major is supported by our Related Course List, which contains hundreds of classes from over 20 different departments which students can apply towards their upper-division electives. These courses allow students to apply their geographic knowledge toward specific areas like archaeology, land use and planning law, plant ecology, or social change in developing nations. The low unit requirement makes this an ideal major to pursue multiple objectives with. Many Geography students complete double majors with related departments such as Business Economics, Environmental Studies, Anthropology, and Global Studies; while others finish such diverse double majors as Geography and Art History, Renaissance Studies, or Microbiology. The Bachelor of Science in Physical Geography (BS) provides majors with rigorous training in earth and environmental science. The BS offers students the option of choosing a more structured, directed program, which emphasizes the quantitative and scientific approaches to studying the Earth's physical environment. At the same time, the major offers the flexibility of deciding on what areas of the systematics the student wants to focus on: soils and hydrology, oceanography and meteorology, biogeography and soils or any other combination. BS students are offered a specific list of related courses from Biology and Geology to supplement their selection of systematics courses. To declare Geography as a major, students need to have completed two Geography classes and have at least a 2.0 overall grade point average. All major courses must be completed for a letter grade. The department undergraduate program assistant is available for counseling on matters such major requirements, quarterly scheduling, honors programs, petitions, internships, career planning, and graduate school information. Research Opportunities
Study Abroad Geography is the study of the Earth and because of this, geographers need to get out into the world and explore. Our students are encouraged to take part in study abroad opportunities offered by the Education Abroad Program, and field research programs like UCSB Extension's Wildlands Studies program, Wood's Hole Sea Semester, Southern Oregon University's Siskiyou Field Institute and University of Montana's Wild Rockies Field Institute. Distinction in the Major Students who maintain a 3.5 overall grade-point average and a 3.6 grade-point average in the major are welcomed to pursue Distinction in the Major. In addition to maintaining the GPA, by the time of graduation, students must have completed 8 units of Independent Studies (Geography 199), graduate-level courses or a combination of the two. Students must obtain permission from a faculty member and the department chair to take part in these courses. Please contact the undergraduate advisor for more information. Careers in Geography The undergraduate major is designed to prepare you for careers in several different areas. There are career possibilities in state and local government offices, urban and regional planning agencies of the federal government, and in international organizations. Geographers are involved in business and as consultants to businesses. There is the possibility of college and university teaching and research, which requires three to six additional years of graduate-level study, or primary and secondary level teaching, with oneadditional year of education normally required. There are also career opportunities in specialized areas such as remote sensing and aerial photography, resource evaluation, urban and regional planning, industrial location, marketing resources, transportation and cartography.
Although you won't find notices in the classified ads for "Geographer," job prospects are actually quite good and extremely varied. Mary Lynne Bird gave an interesting talk about "Hidden Geographers" — people with geographic training who make use of their knowledge in careers one might not expect to find them. We've included a copy of her talk on the website. Also on the website, in the last chapter of an historical accounting of Geography at UCSB, is a list of some of the careers graduates launched soon after completing studies here. And, for your convenience, there's a link to an on-line brochure about careers in cartography and geographic information systems: please go to the brochure at the Cartography and Geographic Information Society site. By the way, UCSB Geography faculty, staff, and an undergraduate student had a hand in producing this document. (For instance, see the cover art to the left of this paragraph.) |
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Last modified April 7, 2004
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Undergraduate
courses are arranged into four main areas: physical systematics, human
systematics, techniques, and regional courses. 1) Physical systematics
courses teach students how the Earth's systems work in conjunction with
each other. A variety of oceanography, meteorology, hydrology, soil
science, and biogeography courses are offered each year. 2) Human systematics
courses cover the myriad ways that humans interact with each other and
with their environment. These issues are discussed in courses on population,
migration, and economic geography; transportation systems; urban and
regional planning and modeling; human-nature relationships; and behavioral
and cognitive geography. 3) Geographic techniques involve the collection,
processing, and interpretation of information about geo-referenced phenomena,
and are studied in courses on remote sensing, geographic information
systems (GIS), cartography, and spatial statistics. The department is
well known for it's technical training in these rapidly expanding fields,
and a number of students from other departments take advantage of our
technical courses. 4) Regional courses discuss in an integrated way
the physical, human, and historical characteristics of various regions
of local and global interest. 
