• About Geography
• Undergraduate
  • Areas of Study
  • Advising
  • Courses
  • Senior Project
  • Awards
  • Learning Abroad
• Graduate
• News & Events
• People
• Outreach
• Resources
• Make a Gift

• Diversity in the Department

Home > Undergraduate Program : Areas of Study

Areas of Study

There are four main areas of study, sometimes referred to as "tracks", available to undergraduate geography majors. Students may focus on one of these four geography tracks or design—in consultation with the advisor—a hybrid track that combines interests from more than one area:

• City Systems
• Environmental Systems
• Geographic Information, Analysis, and Reasoning
• Regional Analysis and Development

City Systems

The City Systems (CS) track examines urban phenomena, including urban morphology, land-use patterns, social geography, and meanings; and the interconnections among cities at regional, national, and global scales.

Environmental Systems

The Environmental Systems (ES) track examines the natural environments and resources that sustain human life and activity, from local to global patterns of climate, soils, vegetation, and surface land form; and ways of analyzing and predicting both human-caused and naturally occurring environmental change.

Geographic Information Science

The Geographic Information Science (GIS) track is concerned with all aspects of geographical information, including collection, storage, manipulation, analysis, and visualization. This track encompasses geographical information science (GIS), cartography, remote sensing, spatial analysis, and numerical modeling.

Regional Analysis & Development

The Regional Analysis and Development (RAD) track explores different ways of life and conceptions of development or well-being of people in different places. It reveals the connectedness of societal and environmental processes from local to global levels.

The Degrees page explains the credit and course requirements for the BA and BS degrees, and for geography minors.

Required Courses

Regardless of track, all geography majors must take the following required courses:

• Geog 4001 Modes of Geographic Inquiry or Geog 4002-Social Theory and the Environment
• Senior project Geog 3985 or Geog 3994 or two credits of extra-credit registration in any course in the major concentration track

In addition, several introductory courses in geography fulfill CLE requirements.