Let's begin this week with a big thank you to Brooke Raake, Caitlin Naber, and Matthew Adair for their work on GeoWeek 2016. Lots of great detailed planning went into making all the associated events a success. We were pleased to award some nice cash prizes to the winners of our Geocaching Game -- think of a cross between a foot race and map orientation with a few tricky clues thrown in. Special shout out to the two Geographers Rachel Beery and Matthew Little on the second place team! Special thanks to Matt for the work on the posters and GIS day.

Next, some interesting news this week from and about our alumni.

Tamar Mott Forrest (PhD, 2006) is the lead author on a co-authored paper entitled “Giving the community a voice: Lessons learned from a comprehensive survey in an urban neighborhood.” This is based on work she completed here at OSU. It will appear in the journal Evaluation and Program Planning 60 (2017) 130–142. Her co-authors include Michael Webb (PhD, 2013) who is now at the Center for Urban and Regional Studies at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. Also on the paper are Dawn M. Wallace-Pascoe, and Howard Goldstein.

Tammy completed a PhD in 2006 working with Ed Malecki. Her dissertation was on "Pathways and Destinations: African Refugees in the US." Michael completed a PhD in 2013 working with Larry Brown. His dissertation was on "Urban Revitalization, Urban Regimes, and Contemporary Gentrification Processes." Congrats to Tammy and Mike!

Kevin Cox sends interesting news: he made a presentation at the University of York on his recent book The Politics of Urban and Regional Development and the American Exception. He participated in a panel discussion of Brexit at the London School of Economics. He also met up with a former graduate advisee, Jeff McCarthy.

Here is a bit more about Jeff: he received his PhD in 1979 working with Kevin Cox. His dissertation was on “Class Community and Conflict over the Urban Environment under Advanced Capitalism.”  During his "first" career he researched and lectured at numerous South African Universities, and was made Honorary Professor at the University of the Witwatersrand in 1989. He has just come out of retirement to teach at the University of South Wales.  Admirable energy!

In case you are interested, 1979 was also the year Ellen Mosley-Thompson received her PhD in this department, working with John Rayner on “911 Years of Microparticle Deposition at The South Pole: A Climatic Interpretation.”  As many of you will know, this path breaking work has provided the foundation for a career of scientific achievement. We are proud of our graduates!

Steven Quiring gave a talk this week at the TDA Forum and last week in China:

Quiring, S. M. (2016) Power outage modeling using weather data analytics. TDA@Ohio State Fall Forum, Columbus, OH, November 2016.

Guikema, S. G. and S. M. Quiring (2016) Modeling the Impact of Tropical Storms on Electrical Power Systems: Lessons Learned From A Decade of Research in the U.S., Guangdong Power Technology Conference, Guangzhou, China, November 2016.