AAG

ACADEMIC PLAN, ADMISSION REQUIREMENTS, AND
FINANCIAL AID:
GRADUATE: Admissions (Ph.D.): Students are admitted to the
University of California by the Graduate Division, on the
recommendation of the Department. The prospective graduate student
submits the Graduate Application for Admission and Fellowship online
(obtain application electronically at:
http://www.grad.berkeley.edu/admissions/grad_app.shtml). The
following are submitted to the on-line application: statement of
purpose; personal history essay; official transcript, with a Grade Point
Average (GPA) of at least a B (3.0) in the last two years of college
work; scores from the Graduate Record Examination (GRE) General
Test; scores from an official TOEFL report (required of international
applicants from countries whose official language is not English); and
three letters of academic appraisal. Application deadline is December
1 for Admissions and Fellowships. Admission is for Fall only. The
GRE should be taken in October prior to the application deadline.
Ph.D. Degree Requirements: All students take GEOG 200A/B in
their first year and register for at least 12 units per semester (primarily
graduate seminars) for a minimum of two years before taking the
Qualifying Examination and advancing to candidacy. By the end of
the third year, students entering with a B.A. or B.S. only must hand in
a paper that would be suitable for submission to an academic or
scientific journal. All students must take the Qualifying Exam by the
end of the third year, although it is recommended that students
entering with an M.A. take it by the end of their second year. Before
starting dissertation research, each student must have an approved
Dissertation Prospectus. The Ph.D. dissertation is written by the
student under the supervision of a committee of three members of the
University faculty.
Financial Aid: Outstanding applicants are nominated for University
Fellowships of various kinds, which top candidates are normally
offered. The department also offers financial support in the form of
Graduate Student Instructorships and internal fellowships from Block
Grants and endowments (the Carl Sauer, the Holway, Kenneth and
Florence Oberholtzer, McCone, Brechin-Chlebowski and the Society
of Woman Geographers).
UNDERGRADUATE: Admission: The Berkeley campus is on a
semester calendar, with the Fall semester beginning in late August.
The application filing period for the Fall semester, for both freshman
and transfer applicants, is the month of November; applications must
be postmarked no later than November 30. The UC application for
admission to the fall term is available in early October. You may
submit an application electronically at:
www.universityofcalifornia.edu/apply or you may print the form for
mailing from the same site. Online completion of the application is
encouraged.
Degree Requirements: Geography majors must take three lower
division courses, and at least eight upper division courses. Of the
latter, there are two options: majors complete five courses in one
specialty group and two in the other, plus one methodology course; or
majors complete four courses in one specialty group and two in the
other, plus two methodology courses. The two specialty areas are
Earth System Science and Economy, Culture & Society.
The Department offers a Minor that requires a minimum of five upper
division courses. Students must maintain an overall grade point
average of 2.0 for all courses taken for the minor. A minimum of three
courses must be taken on the Berkeley campus. Students must take at
least one course in the physical area and one course in the human area
from amongst the courses listed in the range of 109-175. Students may
select courses in the range of 181-188, but if so there are several that
have limited enrollment and require permission of the instructor.
FACULTY:
Jeffrey Q. Chambers, Ph.D., UC Santa Barbara, 1998, Associate
Professor — terrestrial ecosystem ecology and biogeography,
tropical forests and climate change interactions, landscape
dynamics and remote sensing
John C.H. Chiang, Ph.D., Columbia University, 2001, Associate
Professor — tropical ocean-atmospheric dynamics, seasonal and
longer-term climate variability, paleoclimate dynamics
Kurt M. Cuffey, Ph.D., University of Washington, 1999, Professor —
the paleoclimate record in ice sheets, the dynamics of glaciers
and ice sheets, glacial landforms, physical and chemical
transformations of polar snowpacks, drainage basin processes
You-tien Hsing, Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley, 1993,
Professor — economic restructuring and local states in post-Mao
China, the work of overseas Chinese capital networks,
technology development in Asia's newly industrialized
economies, Asia
Jake Kosek, Ph.D., UC Berkeley, 2002, Associate Professor —
cultural politics of nature and difference, science and technology
studies, critical race theory, ethics, biopolitics, human and the
non-human environmental politics
Laurel G. Larsen, Ph.D., University of Colorado, 2008, Assistant
Professor — hydroecology, landscape dynamics, complex
environmental systems, environmental restoration
Jovan Lewis, Ph.D., London School of Economics, 2014, Assistant
Professor — Economic anthropology of Jamaica and the USA;
cooperation and inequality; constructions of race, economy, and
the market.
Beatriz Manz, Ph.D., SUNY Buffalo, 1977, Professor — Central and
Latin America, human and political geography, population
migration
David O’Sullivan, Ph.D., University of London, 2000, Associate
Professor — Spatial modelling, complex theory,
geocomputation, applying GIS tools to the urban environment
Robert Rhew, Ph.D., UC San Diego, Scripps Institution of
Oceanography, 2001, Associate Professor — terrestrialatmosphere
exchange of trace gases, atmospheric chemistry and
composition, halogen biogeochemistry, stratospheric ozone
depletion issues
Nathan F. Sayre, Ph.D., Chicago, 1999, Professor — humanenvironment
interactions, ranching and pastoralism, rangeland
ecology and management, scale, endangered species,
environmental history, urbanization/land use change
Harley Shaiken, B.A., Wayne State, 1977, Professor —
industrialization, work organization and global production, Latin
America
ADJUNCT FACULTY:
Norman L. Miller, Ph.D., Wisconsin, 1987 — regional climate and
hydrology, climate change impacts
David Wahl, Ph.D., UC Berkeley, 2005 — Central America, Western
US, Pacific Islands
AFFILIATED FACULTY:
William Dietrich, Ph.D., University of Washington, 1982, Professor of
Earth and Planetary Science — hillslope and fluvial
geomorphology
Louise Fortmann, Ph.D., Cornell, 1973, Professor of Environmental
Science, Policy and Management — property, poverty, gender,
community natural resource management, U.S. and southern
Africa
B. Lynn Ingram, Ph.D, Stanford, 1992, Professor of Earth and
Planetary Science — paleoclimatology, paleoenvironmental
reconstruction, isotope geochemistry, paleoceanography and
marine stratigraphy
Patrick V. Kirch, Ph.D., Yale, 1975, Professor of Anthropology —
prehistory and ethnography of Oceania, ethnoarchaeology and
settlement archaeology, prehistoric agricultural systems, cultural
ecology and paleoenvironmentalism, ethnobotany and
ethnoscience, development of complex societies in Oceania
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