•  Wrightsville dam

    Students performing fracture analysis and hazard assessment of the Wrightsville Dam spillway in collaboration with Vermont state geologist Jonathan Kim. Photo taken by a photogrammetry drone.

    Photo Credit: Evan Robinson

  • UVM students visit a local farm to learn about refugee agriculture as part of their study of immigrants, diasporas, and the meaning of food and foodways

    Students in Pablo Bose’s senior seminar in geography and global studies visit a local farm to learn about refugee agriculture as part of their study of immigrants, diasporas, and the meaning of food and foodways. Photo credit: Pablo Bose

  • Students doing research at Cotton Brook

    Students on a field trip to a landslide site at Cotton Brook.

    Photo Credit: Joshua Brown

  • tree coring process, markings

    Prof. Shelly Rayback and students coring trees on Camel’s Hump.

    Photo Credits: Joshua Brown

  • students receiving mapping training at Cotton Brook

    Undergraduate students receiving training in surficial geologic mapping at Cotton Brook Landslide, one of Vermont’s biggest recent mass wasting events. Students spent the summer mapping surficial deposits of the Waterbury and Middlesex Quadrangles of Vermont for the state survey, under UVM professor Stephen Wright.

    Photo Credits: Sean O’Neill

  • Restoration cultures students and Youthbuild program build a wood duck nesting box in UVM’s Carse Natural Area

    Members of the Restoration Cultures class worked with the YouthBuild program to build and install a wood duck nesting box in UVM’s Carse Natural Area. Photo credit: Gabi Marchesani

Exploring and Interacting With Planet Earth.

Together, geography and geosciences help us grasp the natural and social processes that shape the world’s physical and human environments and how they are interconnected. While geography helps us understand the why of where, geosciences allow us to discover how the earth works. Learning and working side by side with dedicated faculty, students of these two majors are better able to  explore the larger forces at play on our planet.

UVM’s Department of Geography and Geosciences is centered on educating the geographers and geoscientists of tomorrow to interpret and tackle 21st century challenges facing our planet and its population, such as climate change, migration and refugees, water resources, and environmental health. We do this through engaged teaching, world-class faculty research, challenging field, and lab work, rewarding internship opportunities, community-focused service learning, sustainability education, and access to high-caliber professional networks.  We strive to make our department accessible to all learners and are committed to diversity, equity, and inclusion both inside and outside our classrooms.

When you study geography or geosciences in UVM’s College of Arts and Sciences, you receive a unique, potent combination of the personal attention and hands-on, experiential learning of a small liberal arts college paired with the wide-ranging opportunities and experience that come from studying at a top research institution. You’ll graduate with the knowledge and skills you need to begin a rewarding career and make a real difference in the future of our communities and the planet.

Geography students on a field trip

Hands-On Experience

We recognize the importance of getting out of the classroom and into the world. Students studying physical geography, human geography, or geosciences all receive plenty of exciting opportunities for hands-on experience to prepare you for life after graduation, including field experiences in many of our classes, a wide variety of undergraduate research assistantships, and off-campus and summer internships.

Geography faculty member meets with students

World-Class Faculty

Our Department of Geography and Geosciences faculty includes experts in a wide variety of fields, including geomorphology, hydrology, climatology, urban and rural geography, structural geology, social geography, political ecology, mineralogy, and geochemistry. Their research sites are as local as Burlington, VT and the northeastern United States, and as global as Mongolia, India, Argentina, New Zealand, and the Arctic. They are dedicated to working one-on-one with undergraduates and teach all their own classes in addition to conducting groundbreaking research. Research methods are diverse, ranging from geovisualization and remote sensing, to ethnography and archival studies, to painstaking sampling and model building. The department is growing, too, as we’ve added five new faculty members in recent years!

UVM Geography Spring Travel Course to Ecuador

Exciting Career Opportunities

Because we offer an experiential, interdisciplinary approach to learning, geography and geoscience majors will graduate with the preparation needed to travel down your choice of a broad array of rewarding career paths. What’s more, since your major will be part of a liberal arts degree from the College of Arts and Sciences, you will also develop crucial, highly marketable skills that employers prize, including critical thinking, communication, quantitative reasoning, collaboration, and problem solving.