San Diego State University and UCSB have a joint PhD program in Geography which is distinctive in that it brings together two outstanding departments that complement each other. California State Universities do not offer stand-alone doctoral programs; the joint doctorate program thereby provides mutual benefits for two of the strongest research-oriented Geography departments in the U.S. SDSU Geography grads in the program are required to spend at least one academic year in full-time residence at UCSB, and their doctoral committee must include two UCSB Geography faculty members (although exceptions are granted). Several SDSU grads in the joint PhD program have recently received major awards (see the SDSU Geography News page):
- Ryan Bart (UCSB committee members Oliver Chadwick and Christina Tague) has been awarded The McFarland Scholarship which is based upon financial need and is given in recognition of academic achievements, volunteer work, and progress towards career goals.
- Sean Crotty (UCSB committee members Stuart Sweeney and Carolyn Pinedo Turnovsky from UCSB Sociology) was given the SDSU Human Geography Award
- Ryan Goode (UCSB committee member Stuart Sweeney) received The Interdisciplinary Studies of Youth and Space (ISYS) Social Geography Award
- Jamie Rossiter – (Newly admitted to the Joint program this Spring; her UCSB sponsor is David Lopez-Carr) won the SDSU Citizenship Award
- Zia Salim (UCSB committee members Helen Couclelis and Keith Clarke) also won the SDSU Citizenship Award
- Nicole Simons (UCSB committee members Martin Raubal and Dar Roberts) was given The Cotton-Bridges Award for Environmental GIS – “The Most Outstanding GIS Student Emphasizing Techniques”
- Sara Wandersee (UCSB committee members Keith Clarke and David Lopez-Carr [Co-Chair]) received The McFarland Scholarship and The Caldwell, Flores, Winters Award in GIS Emphasizing Human Geography. The former is described above; the latter is an ESRI Award for Human Geography Applications of GIS which, in Sara’s case, was based on her research related to “participatory mapping, GIS, and livelihoods of local people in a Chinese nature reserve”
- Alex Zvoleff (UCSB committee members David Lopez-Carr [Co-Chair] and Bodo Bookhagen) won The William and Vivian Finch Scholarship which is a SDSU Geography Department scholarship award given to recognize achievements in remote sensing; in Alex’s case, this consisted of his work conducted in spring 2010 to gather field data to parametrize an approach to mapping woody biomass from IKONOS imagery taken of Chitwan National Park. The scholarship can be used to defray educational expenses or to cover research costs.
According to its web site, the SDSU Geography Department offers undergraduate, Masters, and PhD programs with concentration in human and physical geography, and methodological technologies. The department now offers a new MS/BS program in Geographic Information Science. The department has 16 full time faculty, seven emeritus professors, seven lecturers, and one adjunct faculty with a diverse range of research interests, including physical, cultural, urban and economic geography, environmental, natural resource and land use analysis, remote sensing, geographic information systems, and spatial techniques.
San Diego State University (SDSU), founded in 1897, is the largest and oldest higher education facility in the greater San Diego area (generally the City and County of San Diego) and is part of the California State University system. It is the third-oldest university in the California State University system and one of the oldest universities in California. SDSU has a student body of more than 33,000 and an alumni base of more than 200,000. The Carnegie Foundation has designated the institution a “Doctoral/Research University – Intensive,” and the campus offers bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degrees (Ph.D. and Ed.D) in a total of 151 fields. Pursuant to the Faculty Scholarly Productivity Index (FSP Index) released by the Academic Analytics organization of Stony Brook, NY, SDSU is the number one small research university in the United States as of the last four (4) academic years, from 2005-2006 through the 2009-2010 academic years (Wikipedia: San Diego State University).
