This winter’s rains, which reached record amounts and had tragic consequences achieved something that happens rarely at UCSB. For several days, Santa Barbara and Goleta were cut off by road and rail to the East and West and by road via San Marcos Pass to the North. This rapid isolation, as well as the December 26 tsunami in Asia, brings home to one and all the fickle nature of natural hazards and the apparent inability of humans to live their lives in harmony with the hazards and risks of environment. I mention this because, over the last few weeks, we have been interviewing Geographers for a new faculty position in Hazards and Society. The four candidates we have seen have studied floods, tsunamis, drought, crop failure, and internet vulnerability. In each case, I have been impressed that, in the study of the human impact of natural hazards, we see Geography at its interdisciplinary best, bridging the social and physical sciences. I look forward to announcing who the lucky candidate is, and how he/she will fit in with our community of Geographers.
Spring quarter is almost upon us, with winter finals in just a few days. After all the rain, the longer days and the brief return of the sun between storms are quite a relief. As usual, this spring finds us deep in the graduate admissions process, with some painful decisions to make. One impact of the Governor’s cuts to education and increases in graduate tuition (especially for out-of-state students), coupled with the stricter visa and admissions requirements for overseas students, has been to significantly reduce the number of foreign students that we can admit. This is simply not sustainable. Each year we get large numbers of applications from highly qualified foreign students, and it is very difficult to deny some of them admission. At last count, there were 13 different nations represented among our graduate students, and I believe that all students benefit from this international and multicultural setting for advanced study. I remember well my own arrival in the US from England for graduate study and the experience of learning how to work together with native born Americans from near and far. It would be a tragedy if this international flavor were to be lost, and I urge you to do whatever you can to support the University in its efforts to deal with this problem.
Finally, a word on our undergraduate students. At the January faculty retreat, we made the decision to move ahead with some somewhat sweeping revisions of the BA in Geography, adding an Emphasis in Geographic Information Science, rationalizing course sequencing, and renumbering and renaming classes to appeal to freshmen more broadly. At the forefront in our outreach for more undergraduate majors are some new classes, including Stuart Sweeney’s “Geography of Surfing”and Catherine Gautier’s “Oil and Water.”We seem to be in agreement that there is still an appeal to basic regional classes, and we are exploring Geography of Latin America and World Regional Geography as classes that might attract Geographers. Back to the future-perhaps. But, re undergraduate students, if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed, then Mohammed must go to the mountain.
Best wishes, Keith Clarke
