Author: averslui

Mark Bjelland, Chair of Geography at Gustavus, has an op-ed piece in the current AAG Newsletter, a national, monthly publication of the Association of American Geographers. The title is “Reflections on Geography’s Contributions to the Social Scientific Study of Religion.”

On Saturday, many Gustavus Geography students attended and presented papers or posters at the Midwest Undergraduate Geography Symposium, held at the University of St. Thomas in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

The Association of American Geographers (AAG) held their annual meeting March 22-27 in Las Vegas, Nevada. Gustavus geographers Mark Bjelland, Bob Moline and Anna Versluis attended. Mark chaired several sessions on “Reflections on the Geography of Religion” and presented a paper titled Congregations and the Geographies of Religious Diversity. Anna presented a paper titled Highlands…

On a chilly day in January, a group of Gustavus students visited an innovative ethanol plant in Winnebago, MN, to learn more about the process of creating ethanol from corn. We had read a critical account of the American corn industry in Michael Pollan’s book The Omnivore’s Dilemma, and now were interested in hearing about…

Where does the water go when you flush a toilet or take a shower or wash clothes? Gustavus students visit Saint Peter’s state-of-the-art wastewater treatment facility as part of the course The Future of Sustainability. Everything that goes down a campus drain shows up here where it is screened, settled, filtered, digested by bacteria, disinfected…

Gustavus students and avid runners, Lauren Nelson and Kimberly Rostvold, present ideas on how runners can tread more lightly on the Earth while still running far and fast. Their suggestions include using eco-friendly shoes, racing locally, and recycling worn-out shoes. Other students in The Future of Sustainability presented ideas for greater sustainability in areas such…

Gustavus students in the January-term course The Future of Sustainability visited Lake Benton, Minnesota, to gain a better understanding of wind power. Lake Benton is located on “Buffalo Ridge” in southwest Minnesota–a windy area with over 800 wind turbines which calls itself the “wind power capital of the Midwest.” According to the Department of Energy,…

Students in the Fall Geographic Information Science (GIS) class gave geocaching a try on a cold day in November. Like a high-tech treasure hunt, the goal is to use GPS and clues to navigate to a “cache” created by someone else. The cache contains a log of other geocachers who discovered it and maybe a…

The Geography Department held a Holiday Open House on Thursday, December 11. Angie Magnusson and Alye Bohn, both senior Geography majors, shared slides and stories from their semester abroad in India. Students, staff and faculty ate cookies and ham sandwiches, voted on posters to adorn the walls of our new Geography Commons area, and did…

Teaching Assistant Matt Horton (left) and students in the Fall Physical Geography class get their hands wet and sandy with a stream table. Using sand and running water they demonstrate fluvial processes like stream erosion, transport, and deposition. Here they create “landforms” to erode and then watch a delta form where the stream enters a…