Why Geography?
Geography is unique in bridging the social sciences and the natural sciences.
Geographers study places, patterns, and distributions of environmental and human phenomena. These studies come in two general subfields, human and physical geography. While human geographers study patterns of politics, culture, cities, development, and health, physical geographers study patterns of climates, landforms, vegetation, soils, and water. A third field of geography focuses on the acquisition and analysis of data through the sophisticated technologies of Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Remote Sensing, Global Positioning Systems (GPS), and online mapping such as Google Earth.
Many geographers pursue rewarding careers in education; business; local, state, or federal government agencies; and nonprofit organizations. These sectors can be described as follows:
- Education - The education sector includes K through 12 institutions, colleges and universities that award at least a two-year degree, continuing education and informal education organizations, and higher education institutions. Educators may also work in educational administration and academic research positions.
- Business - The business, or private, sector refers to the segment of the economy composed of enterprises owned by individuals or groups. Geographers are needed in this sector because evey business plan includes an assessment of regional opportunities and impacts. Corporations are accountable to their shareholders and operate at national or international scales. Independent businesses are privately owned by an individual or small group and usually operate at a local or regional scale.
- Government - Applicants new to the public sector, which includes federal, state, and local government, may find the broad, integrative perspective offered by academic training in geography to be an asset. Nearly 2 million civilians—1.8 percent of the U.S. workforce—are employed by the federal government, while state and local governments employ 19.8 million workers. Geography's emphasis on addressing real-world problems and issues is excellent preparation for public sector employment, particularly at the local and state levels where much policy innovation, implementation, and bottom-line responsibility reside.
- Nonprofit - Roughly nine percent of the U.S. workforce (12 million individuals) is employed by an estimated 1.4 million nonprofit organizations, whose causes and values span the entire political spectrum. Because nonprofits typically strive to create a better world (as defined by their mission statements), they offer great opportunities for job seekers hoping to make a difference.
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Check out this video for an overview of the power of GIS by ESRI: