Dr. KATIE ALGEO is a cultural geographer who joined the faculty of Western Kentucky University in the fall of 2001 to teach a variety of human geography and GIS classes. Her research interests include rural development, agricultural geography (particularly recent change in the Burley Tobacco Belt), interfaces between folk and popular culture, and Appalachian development. Her current project explores the historical geography of tourism to Mammoth Cave and looks both at economic development accompanying tourism and ways in which Mammoth Cave was "symbolically constructed" to appeal to tourists. Other on-going research concerns ways that the move to contract farming among tobacco growers is affecting the geography of tobacco marketing. She received her Ph.D. in 1998 from Louisiana State University, where her dissertation focused on the historical development and political economy of tobacco farming in western North Carolina. She is a director of the Contemporary Agriculture and Rural Land Use specialty group of the AAG, and her work has appeared in Southern Cultures, Southeastern Geographer and Names. Before coming to Western, Katie taught at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point, where she enjoyed leading field trips to explore aspects of Wisconsin culture such as vernacular shrines and grottos, polka masses, concrete art, dairy barns, and ginseng farms. For more information about her teaching and research interests, contact Katie via email at katie.algeo@wku.edu.

Dr. JOHN ALL has a PhD in Geography and Global Change, a JD in International Environmental Law, and a Master's Certification in Environmental Ethics. Dr. All's primary interest is at the boundary where science and policy intersect. In finding ways to bridge the two, his research has been directed towards natural resources and ecosystems that cross international boundaries: especially those that are impacted by climate variability or climate change. He has recently completed a holistic examination of Colorado River usage in the United States and resulting impacts upon Endangered Species in the River's Delta (located in Mexico). Dr. All developed several innovative techniques for monitoring vegetative change in wetland/delta environments in Mexico using remote sensing imagery. He has also worked on watershed management issues and fire management in the western US. Societal impacts of Global Climate Change are a crucial part of Dr. All's research. He is helping to organize a UN research program under the auspices of WHO, WMO, UNEP, and FAO. This program will focus upon the impacts of climate variability and change upon human health, including vector-borne disease, food production, and clean water security. Also, he is addressing a heretofore neglected aspect of climate change research - the potential impacts on agricultural pests. Dr. All is conducting research on the changes in distribution as increased nightly and winter temperatures create favorable habitat in formerly adverse locations. He is also encouraging others to examine this problem in a variety of professional media outlets.
        Locally, Dr. All is examining radon in the Western Kentucky region with Dr. Wulff and others in the Department. Physical studies of radon distribution are being combined with a policy analysis to help inform local stakeholders. Also, they are working to create a radon evaluation scheme that other communities can utilize when addressing this issue. Water quality is also a key local issue that Dr. All examines; as the karst environment create a variety of problems. Long-term planning strategies that maximize water quality while minimizing the cost to individual stakeholders is the goal of this work. In his scarce free time, Dr. All is an alpinist who has climbed on three continents using technical rock, ice, and aid-climbing techniques. He is a certified Rescue Diver, a triathlete, a nature photographer, and spent several years on Southern Arizona Search and Rescue. For further information about these and other environment-related projects, contact Dr. All via email or by telephone (270) 745-5975.

KEVIN CARY is the GIS Director for the Department. He joined the WKU faculty in July 2002 from the Myrtle Beach area in Conway, South Carolina. His responsibilities as the GIS Specialist for the City of Conway included the development and management of the city's first GIS. Kevin received his Master of Science degree from WKU and served as an adjunct faculty member from 1999 to 2001. He has also served on the GIS staff at the Barren River Area Development District (BRADD). In March 2005, he earned his professional accreditation in GIS (GISP) through the GIS Certification Institute. Kevin's interests are in the development and application of GIS in the economy and environment. Currently, he is coordinating several digitizing projects for the WKU campus. The GIS facility contains a suite of ESRI products (ArcGIS (ArcInfo) desktop and extensions, ArcIMS, MapObjects and ArcPad) and Global Positioning Systems (GPS) technology (Trimble GPS Pro XRS and Pathfinder software). All undergraduates and graduates are encouraged to participate in these projects. For further information about GIS, the GIS minor, the 13-hour GISystems Certificate Program, the 12-hour Graduate GIScience Certificate program, or the GIS Lab, contact Kevin Cary via email, or by telephone at (270)745-2981.

Dr. AARON CELESTIAN 
contact Aaron via email, or by telephone at (270)745-5977.

Dr. NICHOLAS CRAWFORD (EMERITUS)  is a Karst Hydrologist who addresses groundwater contamination of carbonate aquifers, sinkhole flooding, and sinkhole collapse as well as other numerous problems associated with karst terrain. His current research projects include: microgravity and resistivity techniques for the detection of caves from the surface; source area delineation of water-supply springs and wells; emergency response to spills of hazardous liquids on karst terrain and dye tracer investigation to identify groundwater flow paths and sources of contamination in karst aquifers; investigation of radon gas in caves and in homes and buildings located on karst; sinkhole collapse under residential and commercial structures; sinkhole flooding; and storm water management upon karst terrain. Undergraduate and graduates are encouraged to participate in these research projects. Other research opportunities are available through the Center for Cave and Karst Studies, where Dr. Crawford is the Director, on a variety of applied research projects such as inventory of karst drainage, identification of agriculture and urban nonpoint-source pollution impacts on karst aquifers, toxic and explosive fumes resulting from contaminated groundwater flow through caves under Bowling Green, KY, and delineation of groundwater basins in Bowling Green for emergency response purposes. He is also the Director of the Karst Field Studies Program offered each summer at Mammoth Cave National Park through Western Kentucky University. Courses taught by Dr. Crawford include Hydrology, Hydrogeology, Water Resources, Karst Hydrology Applied Groundwater Hydrology, Field Methods, and Introduction to the Physical Environment. For more information about his research topics contact Dr. Crawford at nicholas.crawford@wku.edu, the Center for Cave and Karst Studies at (270) 745-3252, or review the Center for Cave and Karst Studies web page.

SCOTT DOBLER  recently joined the faculty and is a synoptic climatologist. For the past decade, Scott has been employed in the private sector as a GIS specialist and education consultant, as well as serving in the Kentucky National Guard as an E-7. He has broad teaching and research interests in the fields of meteorology, climatology, human-environment interaction, demography, folklore, K-12 education, and economics. Scott is actively pursuing research topics that address various economic development problems in Kentucky. One factor has been the impact of legal and illegal migrants on Kentucky farming communities. For more information about his teaching and research interests contact Scott at scott.dobler@wku.edu. He would especially like to hear from Kentucky K-12 teachers interested in geoscience pedagogy development.

Dr. STUART FOSTER  is a geographer with technical interests in the development and application of tools for exploratory spatial data analysis and topical interests in climatology. He received a Ph.D. in Geography from Ohio State University. He serves as the State Climatologist for Kentucky and is Director of the Kentucky Climate Center, where his activities involve acquiring, analyzing, interpreting, and disseminating climatological data, along with conducting research concerning the impact of climate upon Kentucky's economy. Dr. Foster is also coordinator of the Heritage Corridor Research Initiative. This initiative encourages faculty and students to conduct basic and applied research addressing social, economic, and environmental problems and opportunities along the transportation corridor connecting Louisville and Nashville. For more information about his research interests, the Kentucky Climate Center, or the Heritage Corridor Research Initiative, contact Dr. Foster at stuart.foster@wku.edu.

Dr. GREG GOODRICH  joined the faculty in 2005 after completing his Ph.D. from Arizona State University. His research focuses on how multi-decadal climate teleconnections such as the Pacific Decadal Oscillation (PDO) and the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation (AMO) influence precipitation patterns associated with interannual teleconnections such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) and the North Atlantic Oscillation (NAO). He is especially interested in the impact of drought and precipitation patterns on agriculture. Dr. Goodrich is also interested in climate regionalization and has developed seasonal drought models based on a number of climatic variables. Dr. Goodrich has published his research in a number of peer-reviewed Journals, including Climate Research, Bulletin of the American Meteorology Society, and Weather and Forecasting. For more information about his research topics and agenda, contact Dr. Goodrich at gregory.goodrich@wku.edu.

Dr. CHRIS GROVES  is director of the Hoffman Environmental Research Institute. He received a Ph.D. in Environmental Sciences at the University of Virginia in 1993, where he designed mathematical models to study karst aquifer evolution. Since then, with his students and NPS hydrologist Joe Meiman, he has developed an active research program in and around Kentucky's Mammoth Cave System, most recently concentrating on problems of karst landscape evolution, landscape/atmosphere CO2 interactions, and drinking water source quality. He also enjoys exploring and surveying in the spectacular cave systems of the Mammoth Cave Plateau. Recently, Chris was invited to co-direct (with Yuan Daoxian) a new United Nations scientific program, IGCP 448 "World Correlation of Karst Geology and Relevant Ecosystems." Chris currently is serving as director of the Cave Research Foundation, and was honored as an outstanding scholar in WKU's Ogden College of Science for teaching in 1995 and for research in 2000. Chris and his wife Deana spent much of 2000 on a research and lecture tour that included research projects at England's Oxford University and the Karst Institute of the Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences in Guilin, as well as visits to karst regions and beaches in Belgium, France, Thailand, and Hawaii. He is working to recruit top-notch students and to develop widespread research opportunities for them: in 2003-4, WKU Hoffman Institute students are earning credit for field research in China, Malaysia, England, Hawaii, Alaska, California, and Kentucky. For more information about research opportunities contact Dr Groves at chris.groves@wku.edu.

Dr. DAVID J. KEELING  Department Head, is a cultural geographer who addresses issues of sustainable development, globalization, urban growth, transportation, and regional change, with Latin America and Europe his primary areas of research. His current research projects include a three-year long decadal assessment of research on transportation issues published in Progress in Human Geography, globalization's impact on Latin American societies (recently published in the Journal of Latin American Geography, landscape changes in World Cities, and the cultural geography of Rock and Roll music. Dr Keeling serves as the webmaster for the American Geographical Society and is also the Society's Assistant Treasurer. In his role as a Fellow and Councilor of the AGS, he contributes Op Ed pieces on issues of geopolitical or economic change (see recent commentaries), and lectures around the world on AGS-sponsored educational geography expeditions. Dr. Keeling also frequently leads departmental study abroad programs to various corners of the globe, with recent programs studying Chile, Argentina, London, Paris, Tanzania, Ireland, and Australia. Both undergraduates and graduates are encouraged to participate in research projects underway in the Department, including those available through the Hoffman Environmental Research Institute and through the new Kentucky MesoNet initiative. More detailed information about his research publications and course offerings can be found at his website. For more information about his research topics and agenda, contact Dr Keeling at david.keeling@wku.edu

STEPHEN KENWORTHY  is a hydrologist and geomorphologist specializing in fluvial systems. He received his PhD in 2002 from the Department of Geography and Environmental Engineering, Johns Hopkins University. Dr. Kenworthy's research has focused primarily on flow and sediment transport dynamics in alluvial channels, and has included both field studies and laboratory flume experiments. Dr. Kenworthy is particularly interested in hydrologic and geomorphic influences on the ecology of rivers and streams, and has studied how the entrainment of streambed sediment during floods can influence the dispersal of streambed organisms. He has also done field research on the linkages among soil moisture dynamics, riparian hydrology, and the delivery of nitrate to stream waters. Since coming to Western Kentucky University he has become interested in sediment dynamics in the Upper Green River basin and is working with local scientists and conservation groups to improve stream monitoring and conservation efforts. Dr. Kenworthy can be contacted at stephen.kenworthy@wku.edu or via his website.

DEBBIE KREITZER is a geographer with an emphasis on human-environment interaction. Debbie received her M.S. from Western Kentucky University in 1998 and has been a full-time faculty member since January 1999. She has done extensive research on the Mammoth Cave Area Biosphere Reserve, and is interested in extending that research to the Heritage Corridor Project. Debbie not only is interested in the effects of humans on the environment, but also in the effects of the environment on humans. She is currently working on research that investigates the recent geographical shift of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) in the U.S. and the possibility that environmental factors as well as socio-economic factors are partially responsible for this shift. For more information contact debbie.kreitzer@wku.edu.

Dr. KEN KUEHN  joined the WKU faculty in 1984. He earned his academic degrees in Geology from Juniata College (BSc) and Penn State University (MSc, PhD) and was employed by Shell Oil, Penn State, and the University of Tennessee before coming to WKU. His research interests include aspects of coal geology, petroleum geology, and environmental geology. To date, Ken has served on 23 graduate thesis committees, primarily in areas of karst hydrogeology and related environmental topics. He also has guided 25 undergraduates through semester-long independent research projects, including three Sigma Xi research paper award winners. He and his students have been involved in approximately 75 oil-drilling projects along with assorted projects in coal geology, structural geology, and lithostratigraphy. Ken is a registered professional geologist in Kentucky and has been recognized for his active leadership roles in advancing the Geology profession. Working as organizer of numerous meetings and events, as elected officer in state and international organizations, and as teaching professor, Ken has been honored with an Ogden College Teaching Award (1990), a Distinguished Service Award from the Kentucky Society of Professional Geologists (1997), an Ogden College Public Service Award (1999), and was recently named a Western Kentucky University ‘Distinguished Professor’. Dr. Ken Kuehn welcomes your inquiries about geological topics, research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students, or the joys of developing one's career as a professional geologist. For more information, please email: Kenneth.Kuehn@wku.edu, call (270)-745-3082, or visit these links: Kuehn Story, and Geology Story .

Dr. YANMEI LI  joined the faculty in August 2006 after receiving her Ph.D. in City and Regional Planning from the Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. Dr. Li is interested in spatial statistics and econometrics, housing and community development, and real estate economics and finance. She is especially interested in policies addressing urban issues in affordable housing, sustainable community development, housing programs for people with special needs, and community redevelopment/revitalization. She is also interested in gender and racial issues, and their impact on the housing market. Her most recent research agenda focuses on the interaction between residential mortgage foreclosure, neighborhood characteristics, and neighborhood change. She is also working on analyzing the housing cost burdens of female-headed households, and Kentucky Main Street programs. For more information about her research topics and agenda, contact Dr. Li via email at yanmei.li@wku.edu or via her website.

Dr. REZAUL MAHMOOD specializes in hydroclimatology (soil moisture and precipitation) and agricultural climatology. Currently, he is working on the soil moisture climatology of the Northern Great Plains and its relationship with long-term climate conditions: impacts of land use on near-surface hydrologic cycle components, including soil moisture, evapotranspiration, and temperature; drought, surface solar radiation modeling and dew point temperature modeling. He also investigates scale issues in soil-moisture measurement and modeling. Over the past few years, Rezaul has conducted research on monsoonal precipitation and soil moisture availability, modeling their impacts on rainfed rice productivity. He also has examined climate change and temperature variability and modeled their impacts on crop productivity, irrigation water requirements, and cropping pattern. Rezaul has published his research in a number of peer-reviewed Journals, including Theoretical and Applied Climatology, Agricultural and Forest Meteorology, Ecological Modeling, Physical Geography, and Progress in Physical Geography. For more information about his research topics and agenda, visit his Vita, or contact Dr. Mahmood at rezaul.mahmood@wku.edu.

Dr. MICHAEL MAY  is a sedimentary geologist with expertise in subsurface and outcrop mapping in carbonates and siliciclastics and in sedimentologic aspects of environmental geology. He received his Ph.D. in 1992 from Indiana University, where he worked on a tectonostratigraphic reconstruction of pre-Laramide basins and their associated Jurassic and Cretaceous fluvial sediments in Wyoming. Earlier graduate work at The University of Kansas afforded him research opportunities on western Pacific atoll islands investigating modern carbonate sedimentology and diagenesis. Dr. May also has experience from two major oil companies in both West Texas and the Gulf Coast and from two environmental consulting companies in the Midwest. He routinely incorporates his past employment experience into his undergraduate and graduate curriculum offerings as case studies or class projects. His wife, Beth, presently works as a geologist for an environmental consulting firm and she also provides information for his case studies, keeping him with a fresh supply of exercises! He has recently published papers dealing with the use of X-ray fluorescence technology at mining waste sites in Mississippi Valley Type ores and on hydrogeologic complexities in Ordovician rocks at a military installation in Kentucky. He also recently co-authored a paper on diagenetic mineralogy, geochemistry, and dynamics of Mesozoic arkoses in the Hartford Rift Basin in Connecticut. His current research effort includes undergraduate and graduate student-assisted outcrop and subsurface investigation of Mississippian and Pennsylvanian rocks in south central and western Kentucky associated with the Mississippian-Pennsylvanian Unconformity. The goal of the current research is to incorporate geophysical well log, petrography and outcrop data to map out the unconformity and ultimately define in detail the tectonostratigraphic framework for basal Pennsylvanian channel sequences. He recently was successful in getting an EPA environmental geophysics short course directed to WKU. Any professional or student is invited to attend this summer short course (usually run in late June). The course provides good hands-on experience in the use of electromagnetic, resistivity, ground penetrating radar, seismic, and magnetic methods to map subsurface geologic features. Dr. May is also involved with co-teaching science to pre-service teachers through a NASA-funded course (NOVA -NASA Opportunities for Visionary Academics) and co-teaching environmental regulations and technical issues as an adjunct faculty member for the University of North Carolina. Through his short-course and other nontraditional teaching opportunities and participation in seminars he has traveled to coastal Virginia, Florida and, China. For more information about his teaching and research interests contact Dr. May at michael.may@wku.edu.

Dr. FREDRICK D. SIEWERS  is a sedimentary geologist with expertise in carbonate sedimentology, stratigraphy and invertebrate paleontology. He received his Ph.D. in 1995 from the University of Illinois, where he worked on the origin and stratigraphic significance of discontinuity surfaces (hardgrounds and paleokarst surfaces) in Middle Ordovician limestones of Nevada. He has a wide range of interests in geoscience research, including instructional technology. In 1997 while teaching at Rock Valley College, Rockford, Illinois, he founded and co-administered the Rock Valley EdNet, an educational intranet and on-line learning community. Since joining the Department of Geography and Geology in 1998, Dr. Siewers has worked on the origin of "coal-ball" concretions in Pennsylvanian coal seams and the preservation of plant remains in those concretions. Dr. Siewers enjoys working with students and colleagues on research projects and is always looking for new students and colleagues with whom to collaborate. He has extensive experience in field geology as well as with a variety of laboratory techniques, including sedimentary petrography, cathodoluminscence microscopy, scanning electron microscopy, and geochemical microanalysis. He is actively involved in geoscience education, both regionally and nationally, and enjoys maintaining a "web-log" of noteworthy happenings in geology. He is an associate of the WKU Center for Biodiversity Studies and is the secretary and treasurer of the WKU Chapter of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society. Additionally, he is the secretary of the Geology Section of the Kentucky Academy of Science. Feel free to contact Dr. Siewers via e-mail or phone (270-745-5988).

Dr. L. MICHAEL TRAPASSO is an Applied Climatologist who deals with weather and climate as it affects society in general. In recent years his research interests have focused upon the field of Human Biometeorology/Climatology. This is a subfield of Applied Climatology that deals with weather and climate as it influences the human body. Through time his publications have concerned such diverse topics as human childbirth, athletic performance, traffic accidents, heart attacks, asthma, migraine headaches, and human perception of the environment, to mention a few. On a grander scale, his work addresses the human impact of larger environmental issues such as water conservation, tropical deforestation, climatic change, and ozone depletion. His research philosophy is quite basic and simple: any way in which the atmosphere impresses human life is wide open for investigation. For more information about his research topics and agenda, contact Dr Trapasso at michael.trapasso@wku.edu

Dr. ANDREW H. WULFF's recent research interests include the petrogenetic history of volcanic rocks in the Chilean Andes and Mojave Desert, the health effects of residential radon and airborne particulate quartz dust, and connections to anthropology/archeology such as the sourcing of chert artifacts using trace element signatures, and the modeling paleoenvironments associated with early hominid finds in Java. These research interests involve quantitative analysis of a wide variety of geological materials using XRF, XRD, ICP-MS, SEM and electron microprobe, and he is pleased to have both undergraduate and graduate students as colleagues in all aspects of these investigations. Dr. Wulff also has a strong interest in developing innovative teaching strategies for all levels and is active in contributing to the earth science curricula in the local school district. He is active in training and leading workshops for pre- and in-service earth science teachers. Dr. Wulff serves as advisor for undergraduate Honors students and for undergraduate research projects. Students are expected to become proficient in analytical techniques, write grants, abstracts, and papers - and present research results at professional meetings. Students on these projects have so far received 34 grants from different sources. Contact Dr. Wulff at 270-745-5976; or email at: andrew.wulff@wku.edu

Dr. JUN YAN joined the faculty in August, 2004. He has a Ph.D. in GIS from State University of New York at Buffalo (UB). Dr Yan's professional interests range from theoretical development of GIScience to applications of GIS technologies and spatial quantitative methods, particularly in urban and regional studies. One of his interests is the adoption of computational methods in geography domain. His current research activities mainly involve the field of geographic knowledge discovery in large geospatial databases. Specifically, he has adopted a special type of neural networks, called Self-Organizing Maps (SOM), in uncovering novel geographic patterns and structures embedded in spatial interaction (SI) databases. Dr. Yan is interested in the applications of GIS and other information technologies in solving many real-world geographic problems. Particularly, he works in the areas related to urban and regional planning, locational analysis, market research, criminology, and transportation. He is looking forward to working with students who are interested in pursuing geography and GIS as professional career! For more information, contact Dr. Yan via email at jun.yan@wku.edu