October 2, 2017 at 12:15 pm

Geography Celebrates Hugh Bloemer Day, Nov. 17

Dr. Hugh Bloemer

The campus community is invited to join Geography alumni, faculty and students at Hugh Bloemer Day on Friday, Nov. 17, in honor of the beloved professor of Geography.

The celebration honors the late Dr. Bloemer—and the Bloemer Berg in Athens, recently named after him.

RSVP Now!

Hugh Bloemer Day is Friday, Nov. 17 from 1 to 7 p.m. and features JobQuest alumni panels for students.

JobQuest Panels

From 1 to 2 p.m., alumni will share career and networking advice with students and young alumni.

Several alumni already are confirmed for the JobQuest panels including:

Jillian Prusa ’14M.A., EMC Research, Columbus, OH
Bob Seebald and Greg Magni, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Kyle May ’09B.S., AICP, Senior Planner at planning NEXT
Steven P. Sushka ’96B.S., Sr. Technical Support Analyst at Cityworks

Welcome & Remarks

From 3 to 4 p.m. in Walter 135, join President M. Duane Nellis, College of Arts & Sciences Dean Robert Frank, retired Geography Professor Bob Walter, Alumnus and Geography faculty at the Chillicothe campus Gary Haynes, Geography Chair Dorothy Sack and others to honor the late Dr. Hugh Bloemer, celebrate geography, and engage with geography friends.

Ray Postolovski

About Bloemer Berg: Remarks will include Ray Postolovski sharing the story of how the USGS came to apply the name Bloemer Berg to a summit near Athens, and near Dr. Hugh Bloemer’s former home. Postolovski is a Supervisory Cartographer with the U.S. Geological Survey. He Ieads a team dedicated to improving our nation’s surface water data.

Keynote Address: Naming of Landscape Places and Features: Multilingual and Multicultural Perspectives

Dr. David Mark

From 4 to 5 p.m., the keynote speaker is Dr. David Mark, SUNY Distinguished Professor Emeritus and Director Emeritus of the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis.

Abstract: Entities in the landscape are named in at least two different ways. Toponyms (“Place Names”) afford reference to individual and specific features or places in the landscape. Landscape terms refer to more generic types of kinds of features in the landscape. Cross-cultural and cross-linguistic studies of these two types of naming reveal more fundamental principles but also show that there are many exceptions to what we take for granted in the English language. Categories are usually a core component of an ontology for a domain. But if they do not “line up” semantically across languages, how are multiple categorizations to be expressed in an ontology? On the other hand, toponyms and landscape terms offer windows onto how people conceptualize and reason about landscape, and open up research opportunities for cultural and historical geography. The name and naming of “Bloemer Berg” provides opportunities to discuss many aspects of landscape naming.

Mark is a pioneer of the field of Geographic Information Science. Throughout his career, his research interests have focused on how geographic phenomena can best be represented on computers. This focus has taken him from digital elevation models to cognitive geography, wayfinding and navigation, and geographic ontology. Since 2002, his focus has been on cultural and linguistic differences in human conceptualization of landscape and its features. He is one of the founders of an emerging interdisciplinary field called Ethnophysiography.

Consistently named as one of the most productive, creative and integrative academics in Geography, Mark’s more than 225 publications have been cited more than 10,000 times, and his research received an astounding $17 million in funds. Mark is a founding member of two of the most influential conference series, (GIScience and COSIT) in the academic GIS community. He played a critical role in building the National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis and was a Project Director for two the NSF-funded Integrative Graduate Education Research Traineeship projects that supported 37 completed Doctorates in GIScience in 7 different academic departments. He also served on numerous international editorial boards and program committees for conferences.

Mark has been recognized and felicitated numerous times for his research and educational contributions. In 2004, he was named Researcher of the Year by the University Consortium for Geographic Information Science and also recognized as UCGIS Educator of the Year in 2009. In 2013 he received a Distinguished Career Award from the Association of American Geographers. He was promoted to the highly selective and prestigious rank of Distinguished Professor at the State University of New York in 2007. More recently, in 2016, he was recognized an outstanding alumnus by Simon Fraser University in Canada and was awarded the first Waldo Tobler GIScience Prize by the Austrian Academy of Sciences.

Mark is now retired Emeritus Professor of Geography at The University at Buffalo, which allows him to freely plan his bird-watching trips all across the world. But he is hardly done. Mark continues his research on ethnophysiography and landscape ontology with multiple collaborators who are always appreciative of his deep insights and continue to learn every day from him.