Bowling Green, Ky. - Dr. David Keeling, head of the Department of Geography and Geology at Western Kentucky University, will participate in an American Geographical Society educational tour to the Seven Seas of Europe and Asia this month.

Dr. Keeling serves on the Board of Councilors of the American Geographical Society, North America’s oldest geographic society founded in 1851, and has lectured for the AGS on educational tours to such locations as the Chilean Fjords, Easter Island, Angkor Wat, the Cape Verde Islands, Morocco, Central Europe and the Falkland Islands.

The primary mission of the American Geographical Society’s educational travel programs is to focus attention on some of the planet’s most pressing problems, from global climate change and sea-level rise to sustainability in Central Asia and nationalist struggles in the Balkans, and to demonstrate how geographers address these issues. 

“Learning about human-environment relationships first-hand really helps people to put the challenges we face as a global society into perspective,” Dr. Keeling said.

The Seven Seas educational program will examine geopolitical challenges in the Balkans, small-island vulnerabilities in the Maldives, Turkey’s potential accession to the European Union, and the relationship between oil and Islam in the Persian Gulf region, among other topics. The program is named after its primary destinations: The Adriatic, Mediterranean, Arabian, Red, Caspian and Black seas, and the Persian Gulf.

One of benefits for WKU, Dr. Keeling said, is that the university’s growing reputation is further enhanced through his participation in these educational tours. Students also benefit from the knowledge gained from these experiences and subsequently shared in the classroom and through research projects and study abroad programs.

For information about the AGS and its educational tours, visit www.amergeog.org.

More WKU news is available at www.wku.edu. If you’d like to receive WKU news via e-mail, send a message to WKUNews@wku.edu.

For information, contact David Keeling at (270) 745-4555.

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