I became a geographer reading National Geographic in my Grandmother’s attic. The musty old magazines, summers in Yosemite with an uncle, and reading the Travels of Marco Polo fixed an early and enduring interest in far away lands, especially mountains. Ten summers as a park ranger in Yosemite and Alaska and travels to every continent raised the flat map to life.

My goal as a geography professor is to help students enlarge and diversify their mental map of the world—to fill in the blank spaces with the social, economic, and environmental characteristics that order our world. During the last decade, the hurried pace of our global society—the rising dependence of nations upon each other for trade and security—makes geographical studies more important today than ever.

Along the way students must learn college level research, writing, presentation, and technology skills. A foreign language and another technical skill such as cartography/GIS, statistics, or graphic arts is also very important. Finally, a mix of summer employment and internships completes preparation for life beyond Arcata.

Recent travels include Myanmar, Alaska/Yukon, and Vietnam. Current projects include a grade-school social studies textbook series and another volume on environmental challenges in the Sierra Nevada. I also direct the California Geographic Alliance, a group dedicated to improving K-12 geography education in a state that will soon count 40 million people.