ARCATA, Calif. - The geographic center of California has shifted to a hill at Humboldt State University, about 275 miles north of San Francisco, about five miles from the coast, just about 40.85 degrees north, 124.10 degrees west.
That's where earlier this year the California Geographic Alliance (CGA) moved into its new home in Founders Hall. The move underscores several recent developments at Humboldt State that are helping put geography back on the map.
According to CGA Director Stephen Cunha, a Humboldt State geography professor, the subject, forced from grade-school by budget cuts and competing academic demands, is making a comeback - largely because of the dawning of the global economy, recent academic emphasis on multiculturalism and advances in computer mapping technology.
Leading the way is the CGA, which consolidated and relocated its operations to Humboldt. Roughly $300,000 in annual funding from the National Geographic Society, the state Department of Education and the University of California will fund the operations. From its new home, the CGA aims to increase the general public's geographic perspective on places, environment and peoples, and to intensify curriculum development and teacher training statewide. From 1992 until this year, the CGA operated from two bases, a northern office at California State University Chico and a southern one at University of California Los Angeles.
Making many modern maps
The alliance has been aggressive in doing geography outreach, sponsoring newspaper inserts, poster contests, cooperative work with the National Park Service, one-day "geo-fests," seminars for teachers, family "geo-challenges" and field trips. For example, it recently sent to schools throughout the state about 2,500 "classroom sets" with world maps and curriculum suggestions. Advanced cartography students at Humboldt are designing an updated world map, of which 10,000 will be printed and distributed statewide next month. An enhanced physical map of California, with "shaded relief," will also be produced for use in the state's schools. With the theme "Here Today, Here Tomorrow - A Geographic Focus on Conservation," a CGA-sponsored poster contest has invited entries from kindergartners through high school seniors. (The local deadline for posters, which should not to exceed 24 by 30 inches, is Jan. 15, 2001. Two regional winners in each of four age-groups will advance to the state competition, which will be conducted in Oakland in March. For details, call CGA at (707) 826-4977 or visit its website at www.humboldt.edu/~cga.)
CGA also organizes contests in association with Geography Awareness Week, held each November, and at Humboldt State it organizes partnerships that link college geography students with schoolchildren to kindle an interest in the subject.
Cunha and his six regional coordinators in California - including a new one in Silicon Valley - also plan to put more emphasis on developing locally tailored educational materials, such as thematic maps. His long-term goal is to create a permanent endowment to keep Humboldt State "at the epicenter of geographic education in California."
Cunha's geographic evangelism in the country's most populous state is being given a lot of latitude since it could be a prototype for future endeavors nationwide.
Separated from most of the world by two oceans, Americans are naturally more insular, Cunha says, and this geographic ignorance was aggravated in the past by the unwillingness of academics to reach out to schoolchildren.
A buzz surrounds Geographic Bee
For his part, Cunha practices what he preaches, serving as the state coordinator of the National Geographic Bee. As soon as he joined Humboldt's faculty in 1996, he began coordinating and judging competitions at local elementary schools, including one epic battle at Arcata's Sunset School in which two globally thinking, fifth-grade finalists went one-on-one through more than 20 tie-breaking questions, forcing Cunha to abandon his prepared list of questions and draw upon his own travels for tougher impromptu queries.
The GeoBee originated in 1988 after a 10-country survey showed that Americans scored lower than any of their counterparts in geographic knowledge. Students from fourth to eighth grades in some 18,000 schools now compete in the annual bee, punctuating their year-end holidays to take preliminary exams. Winners take a written test prepared by the National Geographic Society, and finalists chosen in April from each state then gather in the nation's capital (the answer is Washington, D.C.) for a chance at a $25,000 geography scholarship.
There they will face questions from Jeopardy quiz show host Alex Trebek. For example, "Asia's most densely populated country has about three million people in an areas of less than 50 square miles. Name this country." (The answer is Singapore). Or, "More than 50 different languages are spoken by people who live in what mountains range east of the Black Sea?" (The answer is the Caucasus Mountains).
"The bee has put geography back in people's minds," says Cunha.
From Yosemite trails to digital tracks
It was as a 6-year-old schoolchild that Cunha himself got hooked on physical and cultural geography. "My uncle took me on a backpacking trip to Yosemite, and I knew right away I wanted to be a park ranger and a teacher."
After earning a bachelor's degree in natural resources and geography at UC Berkeley and graduate work at UC Davis, Cunha worked as a ranger in both Alaska and Yosemite.
His zeal for a once-declining subject is reflected in a resurgence at Humboldt State, where about 100 students major in geography, and overall enrollment in the discipline's courses is at its highest in at least 10 years. Cunha says students' interest is fueled by the growing importance of geographic information systems (GIS) in the digitized world, by opportunities for environmental consulting for land-management agencies and by a growing need for more geography teachers.
This fall, Humboldt State's hillside campus amid the redwoods hosted the millennial meeting of the Association of Pacific Coast Geographers, featuring paper and poster sessions, field trips, a "cutting-edge look" at the local timber industry and a student map competition.
A new campus cartography laboratory, with specialized computers and advanced software is helping Humboldt lead the way geographically. It has opened up a whole new world of map-making, a world where students can use data "predictively" to look at the possible future of a particular place - such as projecting the movement of a meandering river mouth or the changing habitat of an endangered species. The lab resulted from a $200,000 National Science Foundation grant awarded to Margaret Pearce, a new member of the geography faculty.
The digital cartography classes - taught by Cunha's wife, Mary Beth, and Pearce - have
broadened interest in geography by attracting students majoring in art, anthropology, wildlife, forestry, geology, computer information sciences and natural resources planning and interpretation. Students in "Introduction to Mapping Sciences" class concentrate on how to present data through good map design.
In the last two years, Humboldt students have garnered top prizes at state, regional and local levels, and one recent graduate joined the National Geographic Society'scartographic staff.
Cartographers - those who make and study maps - likely winced 12 years ago when a Gallup poll showed that one in four people could not find the Pacific Ocean on an unmarked map.
Now, in contrast, Stephen Cunha says enthusiastically, "Geography is in." By definition, you can
find it anyplace, especially around 40.85 degrees north, 124.10 degrees west.
A media availability with California Geographic Alliance Director Stephen Cunha (pronounced "COON-yuh") and Office Manager Mary Hackett will be held Wednesday, Dec. 20, at 1 p.m. at the CGA office, Founders Hall, room 107. For graphics or photographs, either attend the media availability, contact Professor Cunha (826-4975) to make arrangements, or use a map for art.
Contact: Sean J. Kearns
