M.A. in Geography and Environment
专业介绍
The graduate program of the Department of Geography and Environment aims to produce leading scholars and practitioners who will make vital contributions to contemporary geographical, social, and environmental knowledge, research, teaching, and institutions. The department approaches this goal by creating an environment in which exceptional Ph.D. and M.A. students can draw on the strengths of faculty and research centers to develop and sharpen their own research interests, capabilities, and programs around critical geographical problems. The graduate curriculum is designed to promote a broad sense of the geographical tradition in its evolving relationship with other sciences, social sciences, and humanities disciplines, and to provide a disciplinary and interdisciplinary platform for more specialized scientific and scholarly investigation.
The program offers opportunities for graduate students with diverse backgrounds and goals to receive training in varied and integrated aspects of the discipline and to work directly with faculty members on specific research projects. Master’s and doctoral degrees are offered, but the programmatic focus is on the doctoral degree. As much as possible, all programs are tailored to the needs and interests of the individual student. The student’s academic advisor and committee members have prime responsibility for developing, with the student, an appropriate course sequence and research program and for providing mentoring of the student. The program aims to foster maximum flexibility for individuals while ensuring a uniformly high standard of geographical training for all graduate students. Graduate students work closely with research centers and programs related to their interests, including the Carolina Population Center, the Odum Institute for Research in Social Science, the Institute for the Study of the Americas (UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University), the Center for the Study of the American South, the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations, the Southeast Regional Climate Center, the Sheps Center for Health Services Research, the Ecology, Environment, and Energy Program, the Center for Urban and Regional Studies, the Institute for the Environment, and UNC–Chapel Hill’s schools of public health and medicine. Up-to-date lists of geography faculty members and courses, along with additional information about the graduate program, faculty research projects, and other information, are available on the department’s website. Students build strong research, teaching, and professional skills with emphases on data analysis, project design and management, and oral and written communication that prepare them for careers at universities and in the public and private sectors.
A large proportion of graduate students receive financial assistance. Sources of aid include teaching assistantships and work on sponsored research projects within the department, University-wide competitive assistantships, nonservice fellowships, merit scholarships, and externally awarded fellowships.
The department occupies the top two floors of Carolina Hall and has access to extensive computational laboratories needed to fulfill its research and teaching mission, with specialized facilities dedicated to spatial analysis and the use of geographic information systems. A range of geographic data sets is readily available. An extensive collection of geographic books and periodicals, including an exceptionally strong collection of foreign periodicals, is held in the nearby Davis Library, while Wilson Library houses a large map collection.
