GEOGRAPHY AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LETHBRIDGE:
A SHORT HISTORY
The University of Lethbridge was founded January 1, 1967. George Zieber (Ph.D.,
Alberta), who since 1964 had held an appointment in the university section of Lethbridge
Community College, was appointed to the Geography Department at the rank of Assistant
Professor along with a British geographer, John Randel, who left the university after only
a year.
In 1968 three more geographers were added to the department. Elbert Miller (Ph.D., U of
Washington), was appointed at the rank of Full Professor, Roy Fletcher (Ph.D., Clark) was
appointed at the rank of Associate, and Marvin Sundstrom, who at the time held an M.A.
from University of Maryland, was appointed as Lecturer. Sundstrom left after two years to
pursue his Ph.D. at McMaster, but returned to Lethbridge as an Assistant Professor in
1976, where he remained until his untimely death in 1994. Both Miller and Fletcher had
many years of teaching experience in the United States, although Fletcher was, in fact,
the first B.A. in geography to graduate from the University of Alberta.
Over the next several years, the department grew by two more geographers. After
spending nearly a decade at the University of Montana, Chester (Chip) Beaty (Ph.D., UC
Berkeley) was appointed at the rank of Full Professor, and soon after Frank Jankunis
(Ph.D., UCLA), accepted an appointment as an Assistant Professor. Both Beaty, a former
smoke jumper with the US Forest Service, and Jankunis, who had been a US Marine and
briefly played professional baseball as a pitcher, added much colour to the department.
The department’s next appointment did not occur until 1982, when René Barendregt
(Ph.D., Queen’s), a physical geographer, arrived as an Assistant Professor. A
graduate of Lethbridge, Barendregt taught for four years at San Francisco State University
before returning to southern Alberta. Advancing quickly through the ranks, Barendregt was
promoted to Full Professor in 1989 and on January 1, 2001 assumed the post of Associate
Dean in the Faculty of Arts and Science.
After years of relative stability, the 1990s saw many personnel changes in Geography at
Lethbridge. First, many of the department’s founding core took advantage of an early
retirement programme implemented in the late 1980s. They were replaced by Ian MacLachlan
(Ph.D., Toronto) and Rod McNaughton (Ph.D., Western Ontario), Erik Ellohoj (M. Sc.,
Alberta) in 1989, and in 1990 by Tom Johnston (Ph.D., Waterloo). Jim Byrne (Ph.D.,
Alberta), a native of southern Alberta, who had been associated with the department since
1988 as Director of the Water Resources Institute, was appointed January 1, 1991. Robert
Rogerson (Ph.D., Macquarie) was appointed in 1988 as Dean of Arts and Science at the
University of Lethbridge after 19 years at Memorial University of Newfoundland. He also
served on secondment as Executive Director of the Canadian Centre for GIS in Education in
Ottawa (1990-1992) before entering the department on a full-time basis in 1992.
Ellohoj left the university in 1992 and was replaced by Yanni Xiao (Ph.D., UBC) who was
in turn replaced by Derek Peddle (Ph.D., Waterloo) in 1996. McNaughton resigned the same
year as Xiao and was replaced by Ivan Townshend (Ph.D., Calgary). Dennis Sheppard, the
department’s first M.Sc. graduate, joined the department in 1997 as an Academic
Assistant, assuming responsibility of the GIS/Remote Sensing laboratory and related
activities.
The summer of 2000 saw the department continue to grow. On July 1, 2000, Susan Dakin
(Ph.D., Waterloo), Stefan Kienzle (Ph.D., Heidelberg) and Wei Xu (Ph.D., Guelph) joined
the department on tenure-track appointments. Dakin is a resource geographer responsible
for teaching courses in planning and resource management, while Xu, whose research focuses
on rural systems and international development and Kienzle, a hydrologist, were both hired
as a result of the department’s growing commitment to the area of geographical
information science. Finally, on August 1st, 2000, Ryan Johnson, also an M.Sc.
graduate from the University of Lethbridge, was named the department’s second
academic assistant.
Geography at Lethbridge is unique in Canada because the department also contains two
full-time positions in archaeology. Turrall (Terry) Moore (Ph.D., Oregon), a physical
archaeologist was reassigned to the Department of Geography from the Department of
Anthropology as the latter department went through a paradigmatic metamorphosis in favour
of cultural anthropology. Moore moved into the provincial government in 1988 and was
replaced with a series of term and sessional appointments until 1999 when Ian Kuijt
(Ph.D., Harvard) was appointed. Kuijt left Lethbridge after only one year, accepting a
position at Notre Dame. He was replaced by Shawn Bubel (ABD, Katholieke Universiteit,
Leuven). Walter Aufrecht (Ph.D., Toronto), a Syro-Palestinian archaeologist was reassigned
to the department in 1990 from Religious Studies just before that department was closed.
In terms of curriculum, the archaeological offerings tend to emphasize the application of
geographic theory and method to the study of various archaeological questions, and all
geography majors must complete at least one course in archaeology.
In its early period, there was a clear "American" flavour in the department.
This stemmed in large part from the university’s decision to adopt the liberal
education model of undergraduate education, which was in the late 1960s more firmly
established in the United States as compared with Canada or other Commonwealth countries.
There was in geography, for example, an emphasis on regional courses, and on the nature
and evolution of both human and physical landscapes. The influence of the Berkeley School
was evident in an emphasis on landscape analysis and field study, an approach to geography
that remains a core value in the department to this day. Indeed, most courses contain a
field component and several, including field techniques in physical geography and the
department’s annual course to the US southwest, are taught almost entirely in the
field. Still, the academic backgrounds of Zieber, Sundstrom and Fletcher as well as
several short-term appointments helped to maintain a Canadian approach to courses during
the period the department was being established. Additionally, the majority of research
undertaken during the early period of the department’s development dealt with
Canadian topics.
Paralleling changes in personnel, the period since 1990 witnessed a restructuring of
the department’s curriculum. At the dawn of the decade the curriculum reflected a
strong American influence; as mentioned above, it contained a large number of regional
courses, and the introductory/survey and systematic courses, which were fewer in number,
were taught in manner that tended to emphasize American-style cultural geography and
landscape evolution. Gradually, many regional courses were dropped in favour of various
systematic and techniques courses. There was also a growing tendency for many
undergraduate majors to define themselves as either human or physical geographers, a
development few faculty members viewed favourably. By the middle of the decade the
curriculum had been almost completely revamped. All geography majors, whether they are
studying for the B.A. or the B.Sc. degree, are now required to complete a common core of
courses, covering both human and physical geography, as well as a set of prescribed
courses outside the department designed to provide students with the opportunity to
develop skills in such areas as computing and statistics. Most recently, a Concentration
in Geographical Information Sciences, which represents an extension to the basic major in
geography, was introduced in May 2000 and is proving extremely popular with students.
Other important developments included introduction of the M.A./M.Sc. programme, first
on a special case basis in the early 1990s, and then as a fully funded programme toward
the end of the decade. By the end of 2000, a total of five students had graduated and four
more were in residence. Members of the Geography Department at Lethbridge also played
important roles in several multi-disciplinary programmes. The Urban and Regional Studies
Programme, the longest-standing of such programmes at the university, was started by
George Zieber in 1974 and co-ordinated at various times by MacLachlan, McNaughton,
Johnston and Townshend. It combines courses from various social-science disciplines,
although most students tend to identify strongly with geography. More recently, the
Geography Department, Chaired at the time by Rogerson, was instrumental in setting up a
two-year post-diploma programme in environmental science. Established in the mid-1990s,
the programme enables students to transfer into third-year at Lethbridge after earning a
diploma in environmental science from one of several approved college programmes in the
province. Geography’s role in the programme is to teach courses in physical
geography, GIS and remote sensing, as well as planning and resource management. Courses
taught by Byrne, Dakin, Xu, Kienzle and Peddle are all in the core of the environmental
science programme. And finally, several members of the geography department also play key
roles in the newly created agricultural studies programme. Barendregt’s soils course
and two courses in agricultural geography taught by Johnston are popular with agricultural
studies majors.
The Geography Department has a tradition of complementing strengths within the
department through the appointment of Adjunct Professors. We are favourably positioned in
this regard as Lethbridge has one of the highest concentrations of Ph.D.’s of any
city in Canada. The Department currently has six adjunct professors; John Doormar, a soil
scientist from Agriculture and Agri-food Canada), Dan Johnson, an entomologist with a
special interest in GIS from Agriculture and Agri-food Canada), Ross Mackenzie, an
agronomist from Alberta Agriculture and Rural Development who researches land-use systems,
Ron Hall, a forester from Forestry Canada who contributes to our programme in remote
sensing, and Derald Smith, a geographer from the University of Calgary.
In terms of research, department members have tended to display a preoccupation with
problems and research questions grounded in western Canada generally and southern Alberta
in particular. Noteworthy achievements include Beaty’s work on coulee alignment and
his very popular Landscapes of Southern Alberta, Byrne and Johnston’s work on
the impacts of climate on agriculture in Alberta which was funded by the Calgary based Nat
Christie Foundation, Barendregt’s ongoing programme of paleo-environmental and
landscape reconstruction using paleo-magnetic techniques, and MacLachlan’s work on
the restructuring of the beef cattle sector in Canada. Establishment in 1982 of the Water
Resources Institute has been an important focus for a wide range of water related
questions, including groundwater modeling and the study of water-based pathogen pathways.
The application of GIS and remote sensing to problems such as hydrologic and hazards
modeling (Byrne and Kienzle), monitoring agro-ecosystem health (Xu), vegetation modeling
in mountainous environments (Peddle), and the spatial concentration of particular
socio-economic and ethnic groups in urban places (Townshend) are areas of emerging
strength in the department.
Student societies play a vital role in many geography departments and Lethbridge is no
exception. The Ecumene Club, as it was known until the early 1990s, was founded in 1968.
Rene Barendregt was a founding member. The first order of business involved club members
becoming affiliated with the Lethbridge Flying Club. Ecumene Club members were able to
rent planes at reduced rates (two members of the club held their pilot’s licence),
and many weekends were spent practicing aerial photography and learning more about the
landscape features of southern Alberta from the air. The Geography Club is today one of
the most popular clubs on the Lethbridge campus, counting many non-majors among its ranks.
It sponsors an annual field trip to Death Valley each reading week, lunch-time slide
shows, and weekend outings that range from hiking trips to fly fishing. In recent years
the club has supported student attendance in conferences, worked on the Lethbridge Food
Bank Christmas drive and took part in a protest over a plan to develop a mine in the Sweet
Grass Hills in northern Montana.
Members of the Geography Department at Lethbridge have long been active participants in
the Canadian Association of Geographers. The division meeting was held at Lethbridge in
1996, setting the stage for 1999 when the Department hosted the Annual Meeting of the CAG.
In many ways, that meeting marked the Department’s coming of age. |
