|
Annual
Conference Brought Geographers & Geologists to Manitowoc
OCTOBER 29, 2001
Academic geographers and
geologists from around the state recently gathered in Manitowoc for the
Wisconsin Geographical Society (WGS) Annual Conference/GeoMeet II.
University of Wisconsin-Manitowoc Professor Catherine Helgeland organized
the conference as President of WGS.
The weekend’s events
included a choice of field trips, a banquet with keynote speaker at the Inn on
Maritime Bay, and academic paper sessions and discussion forums held on the
UW-Manitowoc campus. Some
participants visited the Wisconsin Maritime Museum for their field trip, while
others took a tour of the Niagara Cuesta region of East-Central Wisconsin.
Keynoting the evening banquet
was Dr. Susan Cutter, a well-known expert in the field of Hazards Geography, the
study of all kinds of hazards and their spatial implications.
Dr. Cutter is a Professor of Geography at the University of South
Carolina in Columbia, where she also directs the university’s Hazards Research
Lab. In addition, Cutter is
coordinating the geographical community’s response to the September 11th
attacks in New York and Washington. She
was recently notified that a grant proposal to study the attacks has been funded
by the National Science Foundation.
Dr. Cutter is a co-founding
editor of the journal “Environmental Hazards,” and is immediate
Past-President of the Association of American Geographers, the world’s largest
organization of professional and academic geographers.
She was recently elected to the American Association for the Advancement
of Science in honor of her significant contributions to hazards research.
Her keynote was supported in part by a grant from the Office of Academic
Affairs of the University of Wisconsin System.
The grant is designed to bring together members of disciplinary groups
from campuses across the UW System.
In her address, Dr. Cutter
reviewed many of the hazards, from earthquakes to terrorist attacks, which beset
the United States today. In
recognition of the wide array of such hazards, geographers and geologists now
speak of “environmental hazards,” rather than “natural” or
“technological” hazards as they have in the past.
Cutter discussed the inputs that geographers and geologists contribute to
hazards policy formulation at the state and national levels.
Of the event, Helgeland
reported, “Dr. Cutter’s presentation and the paper and discussion sessions
the following day gave geographers and geologists solid ground on which to
continue disciplinary research and advances in teaching excellence.”
Helgeland added that one immediate outcome of the conference is the
preparation of a new course in environmental hazards for the 13 campuses of the
University of Wisconsin Colleges.
| 