Geography, BA
The Geography, BA is designed to offer students the opportunity to study the integrated social and environmental processes that continuously shape and reshape the world we live in.
This major provides students with broad training across the core subdisciplines of geography (human, physical, and GIScience), while also offering the requisite flexibility for those students seeking a multidisciplinary educational experience.
Program Highlights
Given their interdisciplinary approach and uniquely spatial perspective, geographers are well suited to address important local, regional, and global challenges in today's world. Numerous employment opportunities await graduates of our Geography, BA program.
- Dewberry
- Mapbox
- Vricon
Course Catalog
Review admission and course requirements for this degree:
Career Paths
Where can you go with a Geography degree? Anywhere.
- Work for companies that create maps or engineer the tools to help create maps. Students have gone on to work for Mapbox, Esri, and local government agencies such as county GIS offices.
- Further your education and continue on to get a graduate degree.
Research Opportunities
Research opportunities aren't just for graduate students. Our undergraduate students participate in research with faculty and local sponsors such as:
- DARPA
- Department of Transportation
- Fairfax County Government
- NOAA
Concentrations
Supplement your bachelors degree by specializing in one of our interdisciplinary concentrations.
Environmental Geography Concentration (EGEO)
The Environmental Geography concentration for the BA in Geography provides a unique opportunity for majors to take a broader, integrative science approach to studies of the environment. In collaboration with the Department of Environmental Science and Policy, BA in Geography majors have the opportunity to focus their studies on geographic approaches to climatology and global changes, environmental issues, policy matters, and sustainability topics.
Health Geography Concentration (HGEO)
The field of Health Geography addresses the role of place, location dynamics and geography in health, well-being, and disease. Public health patterns can vary significantly by physical and social characteristics of places both within and between regions, states, or countries. In collaboration with the Department of Global and Community Health, BA in Geography majors get introduced to local and global health issues and develop their skill set in spatial and statistical analysis of diverse health outcomes in populations.
Geoanthropology Concentration (GEA)
This concentration enables BA in Geography majors, versed in systematic techniques and regional geography, to become better versed in the theoretical constructs of anthropology that situate the environment as part of a global cultural system.
Urban Planning (URBP)
Urban planners work to solve issues surrounding the built environment, examining spaces of everyday life in urban regions. While inherently spatial in nature, urban planners also develop transdisciplinary skills involving policy, analytical methods, and social sciences in order to create and maintain communities with high quality of life. Students pursuing the Urban Planning concentration build upon their GIS, cartographic, and geospatial analysis skills through a focus on urban spaces and urban problems.