Coming Soon: New, Improved Membership Database
Note: The first planned downtime will begin July 16, 2021. During this time, the parts of our website that require you to log in will be inaccessible. We will update this page as soon as access is restored. If you have questions, please email us at or call us at 202-234-1450. Thank you! As Phase…
AAG Welcomes New Annals Editor
Brian King has been named a co-editor of Human Geography and Nature & Society for The Annals of the American Association of ; King is a professor and Head of the Department of Geography at the Pennsylvania State. His research, teaching, and outreach focus on livelihoods, conservation and development, environmental change, and human health, centering…
Moving Forward on Climate Change and Professional Ethics
A few weeks ago, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) announced that atmospheric CO2 concentrations, at 419 ppm, have now reached 150% of their pre-industrial levels – the highest in more than four million years, when sea levels were about 24 meters higher, the global average surface temperature almost 4ºC warmer than today, and the first modern humans had more than three million years yet to appear on ; The world-historical COVID-19 pandemic, still…
On Teaching, Mentoring, Balance, and Service
With summer almost here, I’m about to head into my last year as an academic. I’m “retiring” June 2022, although in truth I’ll work full time running my family’s winery and nonprofit, both built around the mission of providing training, jobs, and community for those with disabilities. As I transition from academics, Andrew and I…
Perspectives: A New Column in the AAG Newsletter
In May, we introduced a new column to the AAG Newsletter called Perspectives, replacing AAG’s former Op-Ed feature. Perspectives will share the opinions and ideas of members on issues of relevance to geography. We encourage submissions that stimulate dialogue, get members thinking, and challenge our discipline to take new approaches to the social, political, and…
Opening Up the Possibilities for an Accessible AAG
Many of us “went” to the AAG annual meeting last month, scheduled to take place in Seattle. Of course, we all attended virtually from separate isolated locations. I attended from my living room, my kitchen table, and my bedroom floor. Though just to insert some sense of the old days, for one committee meeting, I…
A Good Day for Geography, Every Day
The late Will Graf would end his AAG President's columns with this optimistic affirmation: It's a good day for Geography. Given the last year, you might be surprised to hear that it is just as true today as it was during his tenure in 1998-99. Let me explain. As I write this, it is the…
AAG Announces Undergraduate Program Excellence Awards
The American Association of Geographers (AAG) has named two recipients of the 2021 Award for Bachelors’ Program Excellence in Geography: The Geographic Science Program at James Madison University (JMU) in Virginia, and the Department of Geography and Anthropology at Kennesaw State University in Georgia. The annual award and cash prize for Bachelors’ Program Excellence is…
You Baby
“You Baby.” It’s Saturday morning. Jeffrey, who is chronologically well out of his early teenage years, but very much still there in spirit, is awake and calling to me with his favorite insult. He’s mostly non-verbal, but this particular phrase is one that he articulates well enough for anyone to understand. It’s catchy. A friend…
Want a Thriving Department? Focus on Undergraduate Success
I cannot think of a person in higher education who has not felt the pressure of maintaining and growing undergraduate enrollments. Undergraduates, who make up the large majority of the student body, are the people we devote most of our instructional efforts toward, and—as administrators constantly point out—are university’s primary source of revenue through tuition…
2021 AAG Honors Announced
Each year, the AAG invites nominations for AAG Honors to be conferred in recognition of outstanding contributions to the advancement or welfare of the profession. The AAG Honors Committee and the AAG Council are pleased to announce the following AAG Honorees. 2021 AAG Lifetime Achievement Honors Dr. Carol Harden, University of Tennessee Knoxville Carol Harden, the…
Advocate for Geography in Austerity
This is Part 1 of a two-part column on what geography departments can do (and should not do) to advocate for their work in budget talks, which are all the more crucial during the COVID-19 pandemic. These points are largely derived from answers I received from geographers in upper administrative positions at universities. At the…