Stand-Alone Geographers in the North American Academy: A Survey of Perceptions and Concerns

Abstract

This article reports the results of an extensive online survey conducted in 2010–2011 on the perceptions and concerns of “stand-alone” geographers in North American colleges and universities. These geographers, who work outside of the traditional structure of a disciplinary department, could become more common in a restructuring academy. Our analysis reveals that most stand-alone geographers are employed in nonconventional institutional arrangements, such as interdisciplinary programs, that require high levels of collaboration and interaction with nongeographers. For the most part, stand-alones see themselves as “ambassadors” for the discipline of geography, but professional and intellectual isolation tempers their impact. Building on our improved knowledge of this cohort, we recommend concrete steps to improve the status, relevance, and cohesion of stand-alone geographers and argue that they would benefit from developing a coherent identity based on the complex but relevant idea of interdisciplinarity.

En este artículo se presentan los resultados de un extenso estudio en red efectuado en 2010–2011 sobre las percepciones y preocupaciones de geógrafos “autónomos” que trabajan en institutos superiores y universidades norteamericanas. Estos geógrafos, que se emplean por fuera de la tradicional estructura de departamentos disciplinares, podrían llegar a ser muy comunes en una academia en proceso de reestructuración. Nuestro análisis revela que la mayoría de los geógrafos no incorporados a los departamentos de geografía se vinculan mediante arreglos institucionales no convencionales, tales como programas interdisciplinarios, que demandan altos niveles de colaboración e interacción con académicos de otras disciplinas. En general, estos geógrafos se ven a sí mismos como “embajadores” de la disciplina de la geografía, pero el aislamiento profesional e intelectual atenúa su impacto. Elaborando a partir de nuestro conocimiento mejorado de esta cohorte, recomendamos pasos concretos para mejorar el estatus, relevancia y cohesión de los geógrafos “autónomos” y argüimos que su condición se beneficiaría al desarrollar una identidad coherente basada en la idea compleja pero relevante de la interdisciplinaridad.

Key Words:

• geography education
• interdisciplinarity
• professional development
• stand-alone geographers

关键词:

• 地理教育
• 跨学科
• 专业发展
• 独立的地理学家。

Palabras clave:

• educación geográfica
• interdisciplinaridad
• desarrollo profesional
• geógrafos autónomos

Acknowledgments

*Thanks to Kathryn Vanney, Julia Sizek, Helen Ruth Aspaas, David Kaplan, Jim Ketchum, Joy Adams, Leslie Gray, Kerry Lyste, David Fyfe, and Neela Nandyal; two anonymous reviewers; and most especially, all of the geographers who took the time to contribute to our survey.

Notes

¹ Nonacademic SAGE affinity group members include geographers employed by federal and local agencies, nonprofits, private businesses (including those who are self-employed), or institutions of secondary education.

² The SAGE affinity group has sponsored panels at the national meetings. These panels have raised concerns and challenges of individual SAGEs. Our intention here is to provide a wider sampling of SAGE to understand whether these concerns are shared more broadly. We acknowledge that Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers, especially, has been wrestling with these issues locally for several years.

³ Our research protocols were approved by the institutional review board of Grinnell College.

⁴ AAG data from 2010 membership statistics, supplied by Joy Adams, Senior Researcher, AAG. The AAG percentage and totals include only those in the “College/University” employment category (approximately 53 percent of AAG members). Nonresponses are omitted.

⁵ For the AAG data, the position of lecturer would also fall into what we classify as “other,” but the general connotation of this descriptor is vague because lecturer is a more senior position in the United Kingdom than it is in the United States. Altogether only 5.9 percent of AAG academic members claim the rank of lecturer, they still represent a small proportion of faculty (J. Adams, Senior Researcher, AAG, personal communication). Only one person in our sample claimed the title of lecturer.

⁶ Bjelland (2004) found fifty-four full-time faculty members at all geography degree-granting programs in U.S. liberal arts colleges, which must make up a tiny fraction of the whole population of academic geographers in the country.

⁷ Although about 20 percent of respondents identified some other institutional arrangement, closer examination of their text elaborations revealed that most of them actually fall into one of the categories that we offered.

⁸ Personal communication, Diana Sinton, University of Redlands, 14 March 2011.

⁹ In response to this question, the average response for SAGEs in an interdisciplinary program was 3.58 (between “neutral” and “agree”), which is slightly lower than the average response of university and liberal arts stand-alones more generally (3.72).

¹⁰ Over half of liberal arts and university faculty in our survey reported regular attendance at the AAG meeting, versus 17 percent of community college faculty; 25 percent of community college faculty reported frequent participation at the NCGE conference.

¹¹ This lack of awareness of geography as a discipline and certainly as a discipline with multiple perspectives has been documented elsewhere (see Bjelland 2004, 333). The challenge is multiplied when there is a lack of exposure to geography in K–12 education and colleagues do not recognize the necessary contribution of a spatial perspective in social science research.