This will be my last newsletter column to you as Chair of the Department of Geography. I’ll be passing the baton on to Dar Roberts this fall, once he has re-acclimated to Santa Barbara after a year-long sabbatical Down Under, and I know that Dar will do well, if only because he will inherit a terrific backup team. I also know that he will inherit economic uncertainty – however, to quote Bertrand Russell, “Not to be absolutely certain is, I think, one of the essential things in rationality.”
Much has occurred over my 3 years at the helm, and I’m proud to note that we now play a larger service role on campus and are exposing lower division students to more innovative and attractive classes that advance the modern view of our discipline. Furthermore, we’ve completed major upgrades of all of our computer labs and lecture rooms, and, at last, our spatial problems are being addressed, slowly but surely, by such things as the acquisition and renovation of new space in Phelps and Ellison Halls and the move of Tommy Dickey’s off-campus Ocean Physics Lab to Ellison Hall.
On the recent academic front, Kostas Goulias became the coeditor of a new journal in the field of Transportation Research, Catherine Gautier co-edited a book on understanding global warming and another on facing climate change (which won the 2008 ASLI Choice’s Honorable Mention—the same distinction given to Al Gore for “An Inconvenient Truth” in 2006), and Reg Golledge coauthored a major book on comprehending and conducting person-environment-behavior research. And the accolades keep rolling in: since last November, David Siegel and myself were elected Fellows of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Reg Golledge was selected to receive the 2008 Enhancing Diversity Award of the Association of American Geographers, Don Janelle was selected to receive the Ronald F. Abler Honors for Distinguished Service of the AAG for 2009, Dave Siegel was elected a 2009 Fellow of the American Geophysical Union, recent alumna Shaunna Burbidge is currently among the top four contenders for the AAG’s Nystrom award for the best recent dissertation in the discipline of Geography, and grad student Kate Deutsch won an AAG specialty award for best Geography thesis. My congratulations to them all.
I’d like to exercise the Chair’s prerogative and conclude with some comments about the uncertainty alluded to in my opening paragraph. Geography is a 21st century meta-discipline that builds on traditional natural science, social science, the humanities, and engineering disciplines – but integrates across all of them. The new Dean of Science at UCSB recently asked me: “You have the cross disciplinary structure that so many are striving to build; how do you do it?” The answer is, of course, that it is not easy. We all have our particular take on the topic, as well as our poorly perceived biases that get in the way of the critical communications that are required to forge new answers to old questions. We have to tackle problems ranging from environmental degradation, to predicting changes in transportation patterns during crisis, to the vicissitudes of human response to spatial decision-making. Of course, the problem is that our understanding must go far beyond merely listing the three example areas, as I have above. Each nuances the others in ways that only an expert can fathom. Most of the important geographical (and, indeed, societal) problems require us to build teams of experts that can communicate effectively across disciplinary boundaries. Geographical research, at least as conducted by our department, is an experiment in effective communication. If the effort functions well, it is because the majority of the participants can understand and respect each other’s view of humanity and the ecological web that sustains it and can design experiments appropriate to evaluating particular processes and developing predictions of changes in response to forcing factors.
The communication system of an interdisciplinary team is most challenged when under stress – as we are now, due to the global economic meltdown. We know too little about the present situation to respond in a clear and effective manner, and that leads to considerable frustration. It is a tribute to our faculty that communication remains good, and it is nothing short of amazing that our staff have done well under the stress of uncertainty and increased work loads. I am pleased to say that, while we have occasionally had to sacrifice our ideals, we are still functioning well and have put in place a system that can respond flexibly to the financial constraints imposed on the University. This is a difficult time, but we dream, and we dream big. We don’t accept constraints; we bust out of them. Right now we have to be particularly creative in bursting free. The good news is that our new President believes in science and understands nuance, something that has been distinctly lacking in Washington for far too long. It is likely that new money will flow into research, and, since many of the research questions that are most critical today require cross disciplinary expertise and an appreciation of space as a determining factor in understanding processes, we will be well positioned to take advantage of this new trend.
Optimistically yours,
Oliver Chadwick
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