Lightning Paper Session Sponsored by the Undergraduate Student Affinity Group, Community College Affinity Group, and Geography Education Specialty Group
Curious as to how your geography undergrad program and department compares to others? How your experience is similar (or not) to your fellow undergrad geography colleagues across the country (or in other parts of the world)? Consider presenting about your school and department in this lightning paper session. We are seeking both undergraduate geographers and geography faculty to share your experience and perspective about your home geography departments and programs as a way to understand, compare, and contrast the undergraduate geography experience.
Undergraduates are the fastest growing membership category of the American Association of Geographers with 54% growth from 2016 to 2017 and over 500 undergraduate students attending the 2018 AAG Annual Meeting. Undergraduate geographers are the next generation to lead our discipline in not only academia, but in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. Understanding the undergraduate geography experience and how it varies between different types of programs can provide insight into: 1) how departments can adapt and evolve to recruit and retain undergraduate majors, 2) how students currently engage or wish to engage with their geography departments and programs, 3) the post-secondary training and experiences currently offered to young geographers, and 4) how and why undergraduate geographers choose whether or not to pursue graduate study in the discipline. In this session, both professors and undergraduates will give brief presentations about their undergraduate geography program experience from their perspectives as educators and students in different university geography programs.
Presenters will be provided with a series of questions to help guide the content for their presentations (as well as guidelines to help draft their abstracts). Presentations will be followed by a group discussion with the goal of sharing ideas to improve the undergraduate geography experience, increase undergraduate geography student recruitment and retention, and promote networking among undergraduates as well as between undergraduates and professors.
Undergraduate Geographers - We especially want to hear and learn from you! If you haven't made a conference presentation before, consider this a great opportunity to give a brief presentation on something you are already very familiar with - your own program and department! This will be an engaging and interesting session (as well as a very friendly one!) and we would love for you to be a part of it.
Faculty - Come share your perspective and learn from what other departments are doing. Our hope is that all participants will glean some information and ideas to continue to improve undergraduate geography education.
Contact Candice Luebbering (cluebbering@aag.org) for more information and/or read past the session hyperlink below for more information on how to craft and submit your abstract to this session (abstracts are due November 8th!).
