Category: Uncategorized

The Geography Club brought Christian Gilbert (2000 Geography Graduate) and his climbing partner Brian Honkomp to campus on Monday March 2nd.  They gave an inspiring multi-media presentation with video clips, slides, maps and gear from their recent climb of Mount Aconcagua, the highest peak in the Americas.  Christian Gilbert teaches world geography at Clearwater Middle…

In America, we expect National Parks to be uninhabited and wild and used for hiking or backpacking. But, in Great Britain, things are a bit different. Their national parks are more about conserving landscapes and allowing traditional farming to continue. We visited the Llangeli Valley Farm in the Brecon Beacons National Park near Abergavenny, Wales.…

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…

Dr. Anna Versluis of Gustavus gave a colloquium lecture to the geography department at Minnesota State University at Mankato. She lectured to a packed room on “We All Live Downstream: Land Change and Disaster in a Haitian Watershed.” Eight Gustavus students from the Geography Club went along to show their support.  Bob Douglas entertained students…