Message from the Chair Spring 2023
Our students and faculty also received various grants, awards, and accolades. PhD student, Tsering Lhamo, received a Fulbright Fellowship and the Summer Foreign Language Area Studies Award to study Nepali language at the Rangjung Yeshe Institute in Katmandu, Nepal. PhD student, David Bachrach, also received the Summer Foreign Language Areas Studies Award to study Indonesian language at Indonesia’s Language Center in Bandung, Indonesia. PhD student, Naomi Hazarika, was awarded the Wenner-Gren Foundation’s Dissertation Fieldwork Grant to conduct year-long ethnographic fieldwork in informal settlements in the city of Delhi, India. PhD student, Xiaoling Chen, won the AAG China Specialty Group Annual Student Paper Award. PhD Student, Holly Roth, was the recipient of the Water Scholar Award from the Colorado State University Libraries. PhD student, Gabriella Subia-Smith, received the CU-Boulder Graduate School Summer Writing Fellowship. PhD students, Naomi Hararika, Prakriti Mukerjee, and Priscilla Corbett, all received the Zena Hunter Andrews Graduate Student Award through the Beverly Sears Graduate Student Grant Program at CU-Boulder. Many of our graduate and undergraduate students also received awards from the Department of Geography, and will be recognized at our awards luncheon on May 9, 2023, and at commencement on May 11, 2023.
Our faculty continue to be leaders in their respective research fields, and several have received grants and fellowships, and awards for their accomplishments. Assistant Professor, Katherine Lininger, received the prestigious NSF CAREER grant for her project titled “Rivers of Carbon: assessing how humans have altered floodplain organic carbon stocks across the contiguous United States”. Professor Emily Yeh was named a Phi Beta Kappa Visiting Scholar for the 2023-2024 academic year. Professor Yeh also received the CU-Boulder Sustainability Award. Professor Tim Oakes was awarded the AAG China Geography Specialty Group’s Outstanding Service Award. Professor Oakes was also awarded a Fulbright Global Scholar Award for his project “The hinterlands of Global China: infrastructures and life beyond the urban.” Emeritus Professor, Babs Buttenfield, received the USGS 2023 CaGIS Distinguished Career Award recognizing her outstanding and impressive career.
The American Association of Geographer’s Annual Meeting occurred in person for the first time since 2019 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The AAG meeting was in Denver and the Department of Geography hosted an Alumni and Friends celebration at the Sheraton Hotel. This evening was filled with much joy, celebration, and reconnection, along with lightening talks from graduate students Ben Barron, Emma Rieves, Xiaoling Chen, and Diego Melo. We also celebrated Babs Buttenfield’s retirement, which included many accolades from her former and current graduate students. Please see the article on the Alumni event in this newsletter for more information and photographs.
Many congratulations to our faculty and students for their accomplishments. We hope you enjoy your summer, and we will be back with more updates in our fall newsletter.