FACULTY RESEARCHThe faculty at Kent State are engaged in a variety of research topics, and have collaborated with researchers across a number of other disciplines. Below we've identified four of our major strengths. Please check out our faculty page for further, more specific research interests, or you can click on those in red for a link to their personal page. |
Geospatial TechnologyGeospatial technology is one of the targeted high growth industries in the USA by the Department of Labor and it is the third fastest growing field after biotechnology and nannotechnology. The mission of Kent State Geography is prepare students to enter this highly competitive field by offering them opportunities to participate in state-of-the art research using GIS and remote sensing.
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Extreme EnvironmentsOur department has a multi-faceted approach to studying extreme environments. We are interested in the physical characteristics of extreme environments, how people and society react to and interact with these environments, and how we map and monitor these areas. Of particular interest are hazards and disasters, both human-induced and natural, and landscapes of war and terrorism. Tom Schmidlin and
Scott Sheridan,
both climatologists, have studied natural meteorological hazards,
from a physical point of view as well as social impacts. Tom's work on tornado and hurricane safety
has evaluated, among other things, vehicle stability in extreme winds, with an eye on improving tornado safety
recommendations and hurricane evacuation procedures.
Scott has also evaluated meteorological hazards, with his focus
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Urban Studies
Jay Lee has interests that include relating geographic events and patterns through time and space. This includes quantitatively modeling urban growth as a diffusing spatial process and interactions between services and manufacturing industries. Some of his publications and research grants have involved digital elevation models, environmental conservation, GIS, web-based GIS, urban growth, urban sprawl, and management of urban growth.
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Geopolitics and Global StudiesShawn Banasick studies regional political economy, industrial restructuring, labor studies, and social theory. In particular, he is interested in the social construction of geographic scale in relation to the restructuring of industrial production and work practices. Although Japan is his primary regional focus, he is also interested in other areas of East Asia as well as North America.
Milton Harvey, also recently retired but continuing to work part-time, has examined 1. The generation of probabilities and bandwidth for statistical distributions with complex closed-form expressions; 2. The relationships between statistical distributions and approximations-- the K-S one-sided; 3. The application of statistical and mathematical models to the diffusion of television stations in the US; 4. A confirmatory invariance study of the dimensions of Greek American ethnicity.
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Our department has extensive expertise in GIS and geostatistics.
Jay Lee, Becky Parylak and Emariana Taylor have applied these to transportation geography, urban growth models, land use/cover studies, natural
resource management, landscape ecology, and environmental planning. Debs
Ghosh also develops Internet
GIS techniques that can be applied to health resources and environmental evaluation. Digital Elevation Model
(DEM) analysis is also a focus of our department with Jay Lee and
the origin of subglacial landforms. While most of her research has focused on ancient glaciated
landscapes, she is now focusing attention on more modern environments such as the glacier forefields in Iceland. Among anthropological hazards, there have been a number of projects undertaken as well. Jim Tyner
has extensively studied the geography of genocide in Cambodia, and has published extensively on his
findings. Communication within hazardous landscapes is key, and is something studied by a number of
researchers as well. Aside from the work of Tom and Scott mentioned above, Ute Dymon,
recently retired but working with the university part-time, has
worked with the Department of Homeland Security on hazard map symbology, and coordinating the use of
common sets of symbols to help streamline communication.
Dave Kaplan
studies aspects and geographic manifestations of ethnic identity. This has led
to extensive research on 1) urban segregation patterns in cities around the
world, including its relationship to housing finance and economic opportunity;
and 2) national identity, borderlands, and separatist movements.
Jim Tyner
studies population geography, political geography, geopolitics, military geography, and geographic thought. In my research he employs a variety of approaches, including post-structuralism and feminism. I have traveled and conducted research throughout Asia, including the Philippines, Cambodia, Vietnam, Singapore, Thailand, Malaysia, China, Japan, Hong Kong, Laos and Burma.