Keene State Geography Lights Up Tampa

AirQuality_PosterFifteen Geography seniors and four faculty members recently attended the 2014 Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers.  Held this year in Tampa, Florida, this is the premier conference of our discipline, attended by thousands of academic and professional geographers and scientists from a variety of disciplines.

Keene State was one of the best represented BikePath_Awarddepartments among the hundreds attending, as our students made six presentations over four days.  One group of seniors, Brian Cote, Brian Jones, Michael Harpool and Abby Martelle, received the award for Best Undergraduate Paper Award from the Regional Development and Planning Group, for their project “The Ultimate Commute: An Assessment of Bike Path Conditions in Keene, NH.”

Faculty members Lara Bryant, Chris Cusack and Chris Brehme presented their latest research results during paper sessions, and emeritus professor Klaus Bayr presented a poster with alums Chris Dunn and Adam Riffle describing Dr. Bayr’s ongoing glacier research.
It was not all work Dinnerand no play in Tampa.  Most of the group took in an NHL Hockey game between the Tampa Bay Lightning and the visiting Toronto Maple Leafs on Tuesday night.  On Wednesday evening we enjoyed a delicious dinner of pizza and cold drinks following our extensive self-guided tour of downtown Tampa.  Thursday allowed for some relaxHockey_Gameing hours poolside at the conference hotel.

The Annual AAG Meeting has become a rite of passage for our graduating seniors as most look forward to the final weeks of their undergraduate college experience.  This year’s juniors should already be looking forward to AAG 2015 in Chicago!