Chair: Jane Southworth
Graduate Coordinator: Cynthia Simmons

The Department of Geography offers the Master of Arts, Master of Science, and Doctor of Philosophy degrees. Complete descriptions of the minimum requirements for these degrees are provided in the General Information section of this catalog.

The focus of the Department is in human-environment interactions, with “environment” interpreted very broadly. The Department provides four main areas of specialization for graduate research:

• economic and cultural geography;
• resource management and land use and land cover change;
• medical geography; and
• physical geography.

Economic and cultural geography concerns such topics as spatial economic theory and; housing and care of the elderly. Resource management and land-use and land-cover change focus on agricultural change and resource conservation and development in the tropics and subtropics, and rural and urban land use and land cover change in tropical and temperate regions. Africa and Latin America are the primary areas of regional emphasis outside of the U.S. Physical geography in the Department concentrates on climatology, fluvial geomorphology, and hydrology. Medical geography studies the geographic aspects of human health including disease ecology and transmission and healthcare issues. The Department’s extensive geographic information system, remote sensing, and computer cartography teaching and research facilities contribute to and support all of the areas of research. Faculty from the Department are also major participants in the Emerging Pathogens Institute, Florida Climate Institute, Land Use and Environmental Change Institute (L.U.E.C.I.), and the Water Institute. Prospective students should examine the research interests of the Graduate Faculty to obtain a more detailed sense of the Department’s specialties (see the departmental website: www.geog.ufl.edu).

To ensure the incorporation of relevant interdisciplinary perspectives in each student’s program, the Department maintains close ties with other departments in Liberal Arts and Sciences, and with programs in African studies, Latin American studies, the School of Natural Resources and Environment, the Institute on Aging, urban and regional planning, tropical agriculture, tropical ecology, water resources, the Warrington College of Business Administration, the College of Agricultural and Life Sciences, College of Public Health and Health Professions, and the Hydrological Sciences Academic Cluster. Certificates in certain of these fields may be obtained in addition to graduate degrees in geography. Geography administers the Graduate Certificate in Applied Atmospheric Sciences.

A graduate student should preferably have an undergraduate major in geography, but applicants with degrees in one of the social or physical sciences are accepted into the Department’s graduate program. Deficiencies in undergraduate work in geography must be corrected concurrently with registration in graduate level courses. All students in the graduate program are required to take courses in contemporary geographic thought and geographic research skills.

The Department offers a combined bachelor’s/master’s degree program. Contact the graduate coordinator for information.

For more information, please visit https://geog.ufl.edu/.