A Brief History of the Department
From the time of the establishment of Kansas State Agricultural College in 1863, geography was required and one of the most commonly listed subjects in the college catalog.
The first professionally-trained geographer to be appointed at Kansas State College was Karl Stacey, who was hired by the Department of Zoology beginning in the 1943-44 academic year. After spending two years as an officer in the U.S. Army, Stacey was reappointed to the newly created Department of Geology in 1947. Margaret H. Smith and Sarah C. Larson were appointed as geography instructors in 1946, while Huber Self joined as an instructor in 1947 bringing the total number of professional geographers in the department to four.
Karl Stacey, Sarah Larson, and Huber Self were the first three geographers to complete their careers at K-State and are considered pioneers.
In the 1951-52 catalog, the word "Geography" first appeared with "Geology" in the department title. A bachelor of science in geography was first available to students beginning in 1956-57 academic year having been advocated by Huber Self and John Weaver, a geographer from the University of Minnesota who became Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 1955. Mrs. Nadine (Oltjen) Burns completed a double major in secondary education and geography in 1957 becoming the first person to major in geography at the newly renamed Kansas State University.
Dr. Chelikowsky, then head of the Department of Geology and Geography, proposed a Master of Science degree program in geography in 1958 which was formalized by Dr. Karl Stacey and first listed in the catalog in 1960-61. Graduate degreee were were granted in 1961 to Jack E. Harding and Han Sik Lee. The first Master's thesis in geography titled "Petroleum Production and Population Change in North Central Kansas" was defended in 1961 by Harding and supervised by Karl Stacey.
In 1966, geography became a division within geology under the leadership of William R. Siddall. In 1970, the Department of Geography was created with Dr. Siddall as the first head.
In the early 1990's, then department head Duane Nellis began work to propose and develop a new PhD program in geography. The Kansas Board of Regents approved the PhD program in 1996. The first three doctoral dissertations in the department were defended in 2000 and included "Fine-Scale Spatial and Temporal Variation in the Relationship between Spectral Reflectance and a Prairie Vegetation Canopy" by Bradley C. Rundquist (major professor Dr. Doug las G. Goodin), "The Relationship Between the Expansion of Irrigation and Crop Diversification in the North Central Ogallala High Plains" by Thomas C. Schafer (major advisor Dr. David E. Kromm) and "Estimating Tallgrass Prairie Soil Moisture using Active Satellite Microwave Imaging and Optical Snesor Inputs" by J.M. Shawn Hutchinson (major advisor Dr. John A. Harrington, Jr.).
Undergraduate Certificate in GIS
Graduate Certificate in GIScience
B.S. in Geographic Information Science & Technology
Department renamed "Geography and Geospatial Sciences"
Related Programs and Laboratories
GISSAL established in 1990 by Dr. H.L. "Sy" Seyler and the lab's first extramural funding contract was signed that fall with the Natural Resource Conservation Service for 1:24,000 soil survey digitization work. The first GIS courses at Kansas State were offered by the Department of Geography in 1991 with then Provost James Coffman declaring the department would serve as the home for basic GIS instruction on campus. GISSAL also spearheaded the university's initial GIS software site license with the Environmental Systems Research Institute (Esri) in 1996.
In 2005, GISSAL celebrated its 15th anniversary at a celebration at which former Wyoming governor Jim Geringer was the main speaker and the H.L. "Sy" Seyler Undergraduate GIScience Scholarship was established. That same year, Esri honored GISSAL and K-State with the prestigious Special Achievement in GIS (SAG) Award.
The Department of Geography has also enjoyed a long relationship with the interdisciplinary Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences (NRES) Secondary Major program. Dr. David E. Kromm was a member of the committee that founded the program in the early 1990's and served as a member of the NRES Board of Directors during its early years. Since then, many geographers have served on the board, including Dr. John A. Harrington, Jr., Dr. Charles, Martin, and Dr. J.M. Shawn Hutchinson who were longtime program directors.
Campus Locations
| 1946 | Department of Geology | Fairchild Hall |
| 1957 | Department of Geology and Geograhy | Thompson Hall |
| 1970 | Cartography Laboratory | Fairchild Hall |
| 1973 | Cartography Laboratory | Thompson |
| 1981 | Department of Geography | Dickens Hall |
| 1990 | Geographic Information Systems Spatial Analysis Laboratory | Dickens Hall |
| 1997 | Geographic Information Systems Spatial Analysis Laboratory | Willard Hall |
| 2001 | Department of Geography and GISSAL | Seaton Hall |
| 2017 | Geographic Information Systems Spatial Analysis Laboratory | Seaton Hall NW Wing |