Maegan Miller - Tim Adams - Zach Paganini - Lainie Rini - Sara Santiago - Colleen Durfee
“ …. outstanding faculty who were immensely committed to mentoring and supporting students … My professors exposed me to a broad range of theoretical perspectives and helped me to cultivate the writing and research skills necessary to conduct independent research as an undergraduate student.”
My undergraduate thesis explored the dynamics and implications of partnerships between police and homeless service providers in Columbus and argued that these measures criminalize, exclude, and restrict the mobility of homeless people even as the policies invoke languages of care and compassion. While working on my thesis, I received invaluable mentorship from several faculty members in the department on the theoretical and methodological aspects of my project. With the assistance of my advisor, I successfully applied for research funding from the College of Arts and Sciences as well as the Division of Social and Behavioral Sciences, and conducted qualitative fieldwork in the form of interviews, police ride-alongs, and participant observation. I presented my research at the university-wide Denman Forum, where I received an honorable mention. I also received a national award for best undergraduate research paper from the Society of Urban, National and Transnational Anthropologists.
The knowledge and experiences I gained as an undergraduate student motivated and intellectually prepared me to pursue graduate studies in Geography. Geography faculty at Ohio State were instrumental in helping me to navigate the application process and choose the best program for me. I am currently in my second year of the Geography M.A. program at the University of California, Los Angeles, where I am funded by multiple UCLA fellowships and the National Science Foundation Graduate Student Research Fellowship. My current research explores police violence against Black and Latino women. Even as a graduate student, the Ohio State Geography faculty members continue to be integral to my intellectual development as mentors, professional colleagues, and friends.
“ …. As a student in Geography, I gained wonderful experiences and learned new skills by completing an undergraduate research thesis … My adviser encouraged me to step outside of my comfort zone and pursue opportunities that would help me develop not only my senior thesis but also myself as an engaged student.”
I began my research in a course taught by my adviser. At that time, I was a participant in a housing justice campaign to stop the demolition of Poindexter Village, which was a public housing development in the Near East Side, and prevent the displacement of the more than 1,000 residents. With the encouragement of my adviser, I made the demolition and redevelopment of the site the focus of a class research paper. I applied the critical concepts that we learned in class to understand why developers chose to demolish and displace. At the end of the semester, my adviser encouraged me to continue working on the project and develop it into a senior thesis. My work was funded by a generous grant from the College of Arts and Sciences.
My research not only taught me much about housing and housing justice but also helped me learn important skills that I continue to utilize as an AmeriCorps VISTA member at a Columbus housing agency, such as grant-writing, interviewing, and comprehensive research. I definitely encourage all Geography majors to consider completing their own undergraduate research!
“My fieldwork in Brooklyn was one of the most intense and rigorous academic experiences of my life; I spent my days touring town halls, public workshops, and meetings for a wide variety of organizations involved in Sandy recoveries; by night I went through the relevant literature, trying to square it with the qualitative data I was collecting in the field.”
My first experience with the Department of Geography came in my third year, when I took an upper-level class on neoliberalism. The class was engaging; full of spirited discussion and debates, and the professor was very thoughtful about establishing one-on-one working relationships with students and pushing them to pursue their research interests. My final research paper for that class concerned the recovery from Hurricane Sandy in neighborhoods of Brooklyn. When I completed my paper, the professor became my adviser and helped me to write an honors thesis on the intentions of disaster recovery organizers and the material needs of effected residents in Brooklyn. I was awarded an Undergraduate Education Summer Fellowship from Ohio State which enabled me to spend six weeks in the summer of 2014 living in Brooklyn conducting fieldwork. I presented my research at the annual national Association of American Geographers conference in Chicago, IL.
“ …professors in Geography have opened up their doors for questions and conversations and have been crucial in helping me”
Thanks to the support from faculty in Geography, I made the decision to turn something of interest to me - community gardening - into a thesis research project. My questions were derived from my observation that radically-minded individuals often turn to urban agriculture, yet the racial and class composition of these gardeners begged the question of who benefits from planting a garden in a low-income food desert. The theoretical framework for my questions grew out of papers and books read during courses in Geography, such as The Making of the Modern World, Geography of Development, and Foucault, Power, Governance.
My dual enrollment in the Women's, Gender and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) department has been crucial in providing me with a feminist analysis and engaging my thesis work with queer and race theory. In both departments, all of my seminar classes have always reorganized the classroom setup into a circle, facilitating conversation and breaking down the traditional hierarchical nature of classroom environments. Furthermore, each department has been instrumental in supporting the connections between my academic work and political organizing. The Geography department faculty have facilitated discussions with students about political engagement, and encouraged taking theories discussed in class to conversations with community organizations.
“I was at the tail end of my sophomore year and still exploring which major I wanted to declare, so I asked to speak with a professor in Geography on the field and research. I distinctly remember her saying, ‘If you choose Geography, you won’t look back.’ She was right.”
I was first introduced to field research during a guest presentation in an introductory Geography course. Through her presentation, the professor took us to rural, rainforested Honduras, where indigenous Tawahka communities, who subsist upon the forests and Patuca river, face several environmental, political, and social hardships. I was inspired and motivated by the professor’s work, and felt an immediate pull to participate in on-the-ground research that contributes to both academia and to environmental and social justice.
Later this professor invited me to participate in fieldwork in Honduras. As part of a research team, I traveled throughout Honduras, from the urban capital of Tegucigalpa across the country to the Tawahka Asagni Biosphere Reserve. I traversed the length of the Patuca River, conducting household surveys in order to understand the resiliency of Tawahka communities to climate change, political pressures, and poverty within the reserve. In particular, I investigated the threats to the biosphere and to Tawahka existence posed by the proposal of a mega-dam project on the Patuca.
Through my adviser’s guidance and mentoring, the field became my classroom. The on-the-ground experience burst open my worldview and challenged me to understand the politics of environment through various themes, actors, and perspectives outside of my own. Scholarships and grants from the department, College of Arts & Sciences, and College of Social and Behavioral Sciences allowed this experience to take place and for me to complete my thesis upon our return.
My training at Ohio State Geography informs my current work at an environmental non-profit called based in San Francisco. Our mission is to use stakeholder engagement to bring together typically adversarial groups – commonly corporations and activists – to find systemic solutions to environmental and social problems. I primarily focus on advancing the elimination of deforestation from corporate practices through a global movement toward “zero-deforestation.” Through this work, I have been able to apply concepts I learned in Geography, such as critically analyzing a political, environmental landscape. What has been most extraordinary, however, is witnessing the power of human agency, a concept explored in Geography. Through research and my professional career alike, I have observed individuals within organizations, companies, and governments break through stereotypes of homogeneity and step forward as leaders to enact positive change in forest protection.
“One of the most challenging and rewarding experiences in my undergraduate career was taking graduate seminars with core Geography faculty. These experiences pushed me intellectually further than I thought possible.”
Throughout my undergraduate career at Ohio State I took classes in Geography that helped me focus in on my specific interests. I was able to investigate a thesis project with the help of the amazing faculty in the department. My faculty adviser helped me shape a thesis around fracking injection wells in Ohio and with his mentoring I was able to write and defend a senior thesis.
The combination of upper division and graduate courses in my last semesters at Ohio State helped inform my thesis project and provided me the tools and critical knowledge to make my argument robust. These courses, combined with the excellent mentorship within the department, allowed me to research and write a thesis that I am proud of and which has given me the tools and confidence in my future career and educational path.
Today I work at Mid-Ohio Foodbank helping to source fresh produce to underserved and impoverished communities. I plan on going to graduate school for urban planning with a specialization in natural disaster mitigation, resilience, and management.
Geography at Ohio State opened my eyes to critical issues in the world and I owe a lot of the framework for my worldview to those classes and professors that were so influential in my undergraduate career. I will forever be grateful for their influence and how prepared I feel for post-graduation life.