Geography
Bachelor of Arts, Minor
About this program
The Bachelor of Arts in Geography helps you explore how people, places and environments connect. You’ll study physical landscapes, human systems, and how they shape each other. Using maps, fieldwork, and tools like GIS, you’ll learn to analyze problems and find solutions. This program lets you focus on topics like climate, cities, or land use, and build skills for careers in planning, resource management, or environmental work.
Program Curriculum and Requirements
Program Scope
Geographers study physical and biological environments, human societies and their spatial interactions, and utilize both environmental science and social science perspectives.
Geographers seek to analyze the processes, spatial patterns and consequences of human-environment interaction, and address issues of sustainability, using maps, fieldwork and geospatial technologies such as GIS to solve real-world problems. The undergraduate major core courses introduce foundational concepts in physical and human geography, as well as field methods and geographic information science. An upper division distribution requirement gives students more focused work in physical geography, human geography, regional geography and applied geography or methods. Each student also develops a 12-unit set of electives related to a coherent theme based on their career goals.
Program Learning Outcomes
- Demonstrate knowledge of core concepts and theories in physical geography, such as relating global circulation patterns to spatial climate variability, biomes with climate, geologic events and evolutionary history and interpreting landscapes, identifying landforms on maps, imagery and in the field.
- Demonstrate knowledge of core concepts and theories in human geography such as the spatial dependency between humans and the environment, using site and situation to analyze emergence and growth of a city, and critically evaluate how local processes relate to global processes.
- Students will be able to identify and investigate a significant geographic question and present findings in a coherent and well-developed project.
- Students will be able to critically evaluate the interactions of human activities with a given resource across time and space, at variable scales.
- Students will be able to apply quantitative and technical skills to the analysis of a geographic problem or question.
Minor in Geography
The Minor in Geography introduces you to the study of places, people, and the environment. You’ll learn key ideas in both physical and human geography and apply them to real-world questions. Through lectures, labs, and fieldwork, you’ll build skills in mapping, analysis, and geographic thinking. This minor pairs well with majors like biology, environmental studies, or urban planning, and helps you understand how space and place shape our world.
Learn more about the Minor in Geography