Recent Department Accomplishments

Tod Rutherford, along with John Holmes at Queen's University, has been awarded a grant by SSHRC (the Canadian social sciences funding agency) to study "workplace governance and cross border region formation b/w Canada and the US."

Jeremy Bryson won the Andrew Hill Clark Award from the Historical Geography Specialty Group for the best paper by a PhD student. His paper is titled "The nature of urban renewal: Expo '74, Riverfront Park, and gentrification in Spokane, 1960-1975."

Matt Himley won the Best Student Paper Award for the AAG's Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group. His paper is titled "On Method and Metric: The Politics of Assessing Mining's Environmental Impacts in Andean Peru."

Keith Lindner has been awarded a Dissertation Fellowship with the UC Berkeley Community Forestry and Environmental Research Partnerships. This Fellowship will allow Keith to conduct the fieldwork for his doctoral dissertation, entitled "Returning the Commons: Resource Access and Environmental Governance in Southern Colorado."

Grad student Keith Lindner won this year's student paper competition for the AAG's Political Geography Specialty Group, for his paper "The Struggle for La Sierra: Contested Natures and Sovereign Scriptings in the San Luis Valley, CO."

Grad student Kate Senner's paper on Alaskan colonial legacies has been awarded the GPOW Glenda Laws Student Paper Award for its innovative engagement with feminist geography. Kate will be recognized at the AAG Awards luncheon in Las Vegas.

Alison Mountz has won  the inaugural William Lyon Mackenzie King Research Fellowship at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard University. This Fellowship recognizes Alison's scholarly accomplishments and will provide opportunity for her to meet and network with an interdisciplinary set of researchers. It will also allow her to complete work on a new book manuscript,  Archipelago of Exclusion: The Shrinking Space of Asylum.

Mark Monmonier who has been awarded the Mercator Medal from the German Society for Cartography. This medal is awarded for internationally outstanding contributions to the advancement of cartography and was presented at the opening ceremony of the German Society's conference in September 2009.

David Robinson, Dellplain Professor of Latin American Geography, has been appointed the principal US Representative to the Commission on Geography of the Pan American Institute of Geography and History.

Congratulations to grad student Lucy Kammer, 2009 recipient of the Analytical Spectral Devices (ASD) Alexander Goetz Instrument Support Program for use of the FieldSpec3 Spectrometer and 2009 Recipient of the Ta Liang Memorial Award from the American Society for Photogrammetry and Remote Sensing (ASPRS) for research related travel.

Congratulations to grad students Declan Cullen and Jackie Micieli, winners of 2008 Sopher Awards. Each winner receives $1500 for use in research and scholarly development.

Congratulations to graduating senior Kristin Novak, whose honors thesis, "Overfishing and Environmental Justice in Marine Fisheries," was named this year's best thesis in the social sciences, by the Renee Crown Honors Program. Congratulations also to Kristin's advisor Tom Perreault.

Congratulations to graduating senior Katie Gill, University Scholar and chosen to deliver the student speech on behalf of the graduating class of ’08. She is also the recipient of the 2008 National Council for Geographic Education Outstanding Student Award.

Don Mitchell was awarded the Wassertrom Award for Graduate Advising by the College of Arts and Sciences at Syracuse University.

Don Mitchell has been awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship for next year. His project is called “Bracero: Remaking the California Landscape, 1942-1964.” This is one of only three Guggenheim awards given this year to geographers. (190 total awards given to 2600 applicants) Other SU geographers who have won this award include: David Robinson (1991-92), Mark Monmonier (1984-85) and Don Meinig (1966-67).

Jamie Winders has received the Maxwell School Moynihan Award. This is a highly competitive award for both teaching and research excellence for untenured faculty in the Maxwell School.

Two Syracuse University Geography students have been awarded 2008 National Geographic Society internships: Geography minor Stevie Sigan has been awarded an NGS internship for Spring, 2008, and Geography major Hallie Stiller has been awarded an internship for Summer, 2008. NGS internships are highly selective, and this is a huge honor both for the students and for the department.

Matt Himley has been awarded a Fulbright-IIE grant *and* a Fulbright-Hays grant for his dissertation research in Peru, "Frontiers of Capital: Mining, Mobilization and Resource Governance in the Peruvian Andes."