The following text is from the Geography Chair’s speech given at the pre-graduation awards ceremony held in the Ellison Hall Courtyard the morning of June 11, 2011:
Welcome students, family, and friends to the Geography Department Graduation Ceremony. I am Dar Roberts, Chair of the Department. I am very pleased to have the opportunity to honor the Graduating class of 2011. As many of you may know, the Geography Department at UCSB is nationally ranked 1 or 2, depending on how you query the data. This ranking is due to the truly outstanding faculty members we have in the department. Now, let’s proceed to honoring our amazing students.
Graduating from College is something I am sure all of us remember well. For students, graduation represents the end of one part of your life that started in kindergarten, extended through grammar school, high school and finally college, and the beginning of another that will ultimately lead to a career. For many of you, it has probably been a long, but very interesting road with many adventures on the way, a few wrong turns, some great choices, and also a few lucky ones. Your decision to come to UCSB and earn a degree in Geography was a good one.
For some of you, this degree is likely to represent the end of 16 years of school and the start of a new road and a new career. If that is the case, we wish you the best of luck, and hope we have given you a great start with training in Geography. Personally, I can imagine few better choices for a degree. Society is faced with an increasing number of challenges, from environmental pollution, such as the gulf oil spill and lingering oil in wetlands, to natural disasters, such as the massive Japanese earthquake and tsunami, to global warming and efforts to reduce Co2 emissions and improve our lives by designing healthier, more energy efficient cities and neighborhoods. Smart phones allow us to navigate even the most challenging cities, and we can routinely watch our world change through the eyes of Google Earth. In each of these examples, a Geography degree contributes, and the jobs will be there.
For those of you who plan on continuing along an academic path (and more school), the road continues on, but it will change. Each step we take along the path of education becomes more challenging and more rewarding. One of your greatest challenges, as you will discover, is figuring out what your research question is. However, rest assured that the world is full of interesting and important research questions, and you will find one and I suspect it will be a good one. When I look at the kinds of research our graduate and undergraduates do today, it just blows me away. I can’t wait to see what kinds of questions this class will ask and the problems you will solve.
Finally, you have not traveled this road alone. First and foremost, you had your parents, who supported you, pushed you at every stage of your education, and probably did a fair amount of laundry. I am sure every one of them is immensely proud of you today. Secondly, you had your friends. One of the most special things about college is the friends you make, and the experiences you share. My memories of college include many long nights of study, too much bad coffee or Mountain Dew, incredible field trips camping under the stars, and lots of friends who were there with me at every stage. Thanks to applications like Facebook, many of us are rediscovering each other. Last but not least, you had your professors, TAs, and other advisors. Some of the people who influenced me the most were my teachers. I suspect you can say the same.
While we honor many students today, I want to acknowledge all of the students who are graduating. This year’s class includes 59 students, 5 of whom will earn the Bachelor of Science, 20 with a Bachelor of Arts with a GIS Emphasis, and 34 earning the Bachelor of Arts. 13 of these have earned the Outstanding Achievement in the Geography Major Award, and 3 of them the Distinction in the Major Award. With that, let’s give out some awards.
JACK AND LAURA DANGERMOND UNDERGRADUATE FELLOWSHIP: We typically give out this award at this ceremony each year, but award winner Adam Rottman-Hipps was unable to attend today’s ceremony, so we awarded it at the year-end colloquium on May 26. The Jack and Laura Dangermond Undergraduate award is a significant honor given to the most accomplished student or students in geographic information science (GIS) in the department of Geography. Jack and Laura Dangermond are the co-founders and President and Executive Vice President respectively of the Environmental Science Research Institute, or ESRI. ESRI is the major designer and industrial supplier of software in the field of GIS.
NICHOLAS BOURDAKIS MEMORIAL AWARD: The Bourdakis Fund was established after the tragic death of Nicholas Bourdakis, who died in February 2001 after having just declared Geography as his major. This award is given to a newly declared Geography major who has the highest GPA. This fund helps keep Nick’s memory alive by supporting future generations of outstanding undergraduate students in Geography at UCSB. This year’s recipient of the Nicholas Bourdakis Memorial Award is Lisa Berry. Lisa also was unable to attend today’s ceremony and was presented with the award on May 26 at the year-end colloquium.
CHAIR’S AWARD FOR EXCELLENCE IN GEOGRAPHY: This award, presented to the graduating senior who has majored in Geography and has attained the highest overall grade point average, is given to Jason Burgdorfer. Jason not only has outstanding academic talent, but he has donated a lot of his time to the Geography Club and to the Department in general over the years as well. In particular, he proved invaluable to our Undergraduate Advisor, Kathy Davis, by voluntarily helping her with class scheduling and many other critical tasks. For the past two years, Jason has also assisted with Spring Insight and provided his impression of what it is to be a Geography Major to potential students visiting the campus. We’d like to express our gratitude for all Jason’s efforts and acknowledge him with this monetary award – and wish him the best of luck in graduate school!
DISTINCTION IN THE MAJOR AWARD: Distinction in the Major is awarded to students who are graduating with a GPA of a 3.5 overall GPA with a 3.6 or higher in Geography classes and have undertaken a major independent study project and/or graduate-level studies. This year’s awardees are Jason Burgdorfer, Nicholas Santos, and Evanne St. Charles.
OUTSTANDING ACHIEVEMENT IN GEOGRAPHY AWARD: Awarded to students graduating with a grade point average of 3.5 or higher in the upper division geography classes, this year’s 13 recipients are Carson Adam, Jason Burgdorfer, Marc Cilurzo, Courtney Keeney, Christal McCrary, Tina Nguyen, Yuina Nunokawa, Nathan O’Daniel, Jessica Pepper, William Robinson, Nicholas Santos, Evanne St. Charles, and Matthew Yee.
CHAIR’S DISTINGUISHED SERVICE AWARD: This year’s award, given to students who do service to the department that is above and beyond their call of duty, went to Evanne St. Charles. Evanne has been a major force toward the US Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED™) for Existing Buildings Operations and Maintenance (EBOM) accreditation of Ellison Hall; she has coordinated the Energy, Water, and Plug load audits and written the proposal to fund more efficient aerators. With her hard work, she has brought Ellison Hall two short points away from LEED™ Platinum accreditation, which would make this building the oldest Platinum accredited building in the U.S. Evanne is also one of the co-creators of PACES, the Program for the Assessment and Certification for the Environment and Sustainability. Evanne’s work has helped make the Geography department one of the Sustainability champion departments on our campus. Evanne was also recently selected as the keynote speaker at the higher education sustainability conference – the only one from the entire UC System. Evanne-thank you so much for all your efforts, and we wish you the best of luck in Graduate School!
PERSEVERANCE AS A GEOGRAPHY MAJOR AWARD: Brian Belsha and Troy Zada received this award in recognition of having overcome difficult, extenuating circumstances in order to graduate as Geography majors.
Editor’s note: Photos of the event will be posted on the Geography Event Photos page.
.jpg)
.jpg)
