Who are We?

Founded in 1975, the Geography Department at Virginia Tech is part of the College of Natural Resources and Environment (CNRE). Department offices, labs, and facilities are located in Major Williams Hall in the Upper Quad area of the Virginia Tech Campus (building #7 grid 3M).

The Department offers both B.A. and M.S. degrees. We participate in the College of Natural Resources and environment doctoral program in Geospatial and Environmental Analysis.

Find out about our exciting new degree program in Meteorology!

Answer to the Newsletter Puzzle: http://www.esri.com/news/arcuser/0610/nospin.html

What do we do?

We work in a wide variety of careers in teaching, research, planning organizations, business, Information Technology,and government. To explore further, look at the Association of American Geographers (AAG) website on careers.

Our Mission Statement

The mission of the department of Geography at Virginia Tech is to foster an appreciation and understanding of the diversity of Earth’s physical and cultural environments, the importance and value of a spatial perspective, and an understanding of the complex interrelationships between peoples and their environments at a variety of scales.  Our goal is to provide students with the intellectual and technical skills to synthesize information, become critical thinkers, develop into better and more informed citizens, and find success in employment or further academic training.

Our department emphasizes teaching and scholarship involving four themes: 1) human-environment relationships – how culture, gender, economy, and politics affect people’s use of and interaction with the environment; 2) international development – the relations between developed and developing countries and the impacts of globalization at local, national, and regional levels; 3) environmental systems – the interrelations among patterns of climate, landforms, vegetation, soils and water, including the factors and processes that produce those patterns; and 4) geospatial analysis – the use of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Global Positioning Systems (GPS), computer mapping, and remote sensing in geographic analyses.