West Lakes Division of the American Association of Geographers (WLDAAG) 2019 Annual Meeting

Join the West Lakes Division of the American Association of Geographers (WLDAAG) at the 2019 Annual Meeting for the latest in research, teaching, and applications in geography, sustainability, and GIScience. The meeting will be held Thursday, October 24, to Saturday, October 26. It will feature presentations and posters given by students and geographers mostly from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Minnesota, Missouri, Upper Peninsula of Michigan, and Wisconsin. It will also feature workshops and fields trips led by professionals from the Department of Geography at University Northern Iowa. The Keynote Address of this event will be “Expanding the Community of Geography” given by Dr. David H. Kaplan, the current AAG President. Additionally, submissions of full papers are invited for publication on the Special Issue of “the American Association of Geographers (AAG) West Lakes Regional Division” in International Journal of Geospatial and Environmental Research (IJGER, Editor-in-Chief Woonsup Choi), an open-access, peer-reviewed international journal published by Korea-America Association for Geospatial and Environmental Sciences.

The Geography Department at the University of Northern Iowa welcomes the WLDAAG Annual Meeting for the first time in more than three and half decades since it last hosted the event in 1976. It is a very auspicious year for WLD to come here, since 2019 marks the 125th anniversary of the Geography Department when it briefly existed in 1894-1896 and the 50th anniversary of the department when it permanently reestablished in 1969. Home to the 2nd oldest Beta Chapter of the Gamma Theta Upsilon (GTU) in the GTU worldwide system, the department offers a BA degree in Geography, a BA in Environmental Resource Management, a BS in Geographic Information Science, and a MA in geography. All programs have an applied and a job-oriented nature. With a low student to faculty ratio (3:1 for undergraduate and 2:1 for graduate), students are supported with various resources, which are facilitated by premier research and outreach centers/laboratories housed in the department. As one of the most productive departments in research and grant-seeking on campus (an average of $1,000,000 per year in external funding since 2007), both grad- and undergraduate students are offered many opportunities to engage in real-world research projects based in Iowa, the nation, and the world.  

Founded in 1845, the City of Cedar Falls has an estimated population of 41,390 in 2016 and is located in the heart of metropolitan Black Hawk County – the 4th-most populous in Iowa, along with the city of Waterloo. It is the home to the University of Northern Iowa, one of Iowa’s three state public universities. Alongside the Cedar River, the general topography of the city is characterized with gentle rolling slopes. It ranks as one of the 50 best college towns in America by “Best College Reviews” in 2019.