G&ES 104: World Geography is offered every term, and I teach it at least once or twice annually. Students read a leading textbook and survey the discipline: Landforms, Vegetation, Weather and Climate, Cartography, Population, Culture, Economic, Political, Behavioral, Urban, Resource, and Human Impact on the Environment. Lectures are organized around chapter outlines available from the Internet site, which also has handouts, assignments, and useful Internet links.
G&ES 312: Economic Geography, usually offered fall terms, emphasizes abstract modelling of economic processes. The models help to explain how various economic systems -- free market to central planning -- tend to organize space. Considerable emphasis is given to spatial/economic/environmental impacts of resource use and pollution. A background course in microeconomics would be helpful but is not essential to students taking this course. Many of the materials are now available from the syllabus web site.
G&ES 362: Population Problems is an undergraduate course in which students study the dynamics and impacts of demographic trends including births rates, death rates, morbidity, migration, family planning, policy, prospects and projections. Demographic theories are studied and several class projects are designed around a salient topic -- for example one year the class catalogued major death events by war, epidemic, famine, and various natural disasters to create a set of web pages. The class may also use current software, pubished data, and realistic estimates to create a detailed populaton projection for a selected country. Grading is also based on a paper and two exams.
G&ES 377: Computer Cartography, which I generally teach Fall and Summer terms, teaches many thematic map types: choroplethic, isarithmic, 3-D, contour, proportional circle, line, scatter dot, line. Cartographic conventions and techniques relating to color, typography, and other aspects of map design are emphasized. Near-weekly assignments are completed on computer graphics programs, cartographic software, and by hand. Students use a scanner, digitizer, and Internet sources for creating base maps and acquiring data. They publish their work on their own web pages. Lectures outlines are available, along with all handouts and samples, on the course web site.
G&ES 391: Research with GIS has the strict prerequisite of G&ES 377 (see above). Students use a vector GIS program to perform the basic GIS functions: creation of boundary files from large public data sets, digitize paper base maps, link database data to map objects (points, line segments, and areas), convert foreign file types to GIS format, select subsets of object layers, perform summary statistics on subsets, move data between object layers, overlay and buffer layers, and control cartographic and numeric outpout. Near-weekly assignments lead to a final individual project: Rating 26,000 incorporated places in the United States according to the student's personal residential preferences. Some hands-on work is also possible with raster (pixel-based) GIS.
G&ES 415: This course, taught periodically, is designed as a fast-track introduction to Computer Cartography and GIS together for graduate students who want to learn about computer mapping and GIS, attain some hands-on experience, but who probably don't intend to use much GIS in their own research or work. Students learn the basics of both raster and vector approaches toward mapping and Geographic Information Systems and they do several projects. G&ES 415 is a sufficient introduction to take G&ES 416 (raster) and/or G&ES 417 (vector), or independent studies.
G&ES 417: Urban Information Systems, offered periodically, is so named because vector is the preferred GIS type for urban systems (raster is generally better for natural features measurable from above). This is a newly-developed project-based course which may be individual projects or a group project, depending on the term offered.
G&ES 446: Population Problems. This graduate level course might be expected biannually in no particular term. Students read extensively from the text, from web-based links (available from this syllabus site), and from handouts (many of which are available from this syllabus site), and expected to attend prepared to engage in discussion on weekly topics: historical trends, theories of demographic change, mortality and morbidity, migration, family planning, data sources and projections, etc. Typically, grades are based on participation, on one short paper & presentation (on a topic of the student's choice), and a population projection using current software (provided) along with a paper and graphs describing it.