Small Conferences Make a Big Impact

--By Katie Kruapala, UNT undergraduate student in geography

After recently attending the Southwestern Division of the Association of American Geographers Meeting in San Antonio, I was thoroughly reminded of the sheer scope of topics one can funnel their geographic research into.

It takes all kinds to do geographic research,
and certainly all kinds of research were being done.

Over the course of just a few days, fellow students and I (Photo 1) listened to presentations on French bread, the spread of Chagas disease, Gulf Coast hurricane deposition, and the spatial distribution of Appalachian toponyms. This variety in the presentations, and also in the presenters, was a sort of first-hand reminder that nearly any topic of interest can be pursued through a geographic lens. While the presentations were brief, a lot of them were eye opening and introduced me to problems and ideas that I only could have dreamed existed.

I was also moved by the graduate and undergraduate research presentations, that regardless of age and experience, research is research, and if conducted well and presented in an efficient and intriguing way, success could be had. After presenting a poster at the conference, undergraduate Caitlin Bradford (Photo 2) reflected,

It was inspiring to share research with other geographers
and get feedback from others in the field on how I can further my research."

All in all, it was fun and a great experience, not only for me but also for our undergraduate paper and poster competition winners Joshua Bova and Christina Kenny, and the others who attended.

Photo 1: Geography undergrads take a lunch break on the River Walk. From left to right: Tyler Breckenridge, Jill Reyes, Ashley Jo Miller, Katie Krupala, Katherine Hill.

Photo 2: Jen Bailey (left) and Caitlin Bradford (right) in front of their posters at SWAAG 2015.

Photo 3: Christina Kenny (left) placed 2nd in Undergraduate Poster Competition and Joshua Bova (right) placed 1st in Undergraduate Paper Competition.