2021 Awards, Honors and Achievements

Update 1/14/2022: This page has been updated to include 2021 Library Research Award Winner Maxwell Forman. On June 10, 2021, the Department of Geography celebrates over 150 B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. recipients at our annual Convocation Ceremony! Due to Washington State's ongoing COVID-19 safety efforts, the event was held virtually with a prerecorded video, slideshow of graduates, and Zoom rooms with faculty and staff. This online convocation offers space for recognizing the strength and resilience of our geography community. Professor Mark Ellis, Undergraduate Program Coordinator, and Professor Suzanne Withers, Graduate Program Coordinator, announced the following honorees who received awards from the department and from other units at UW:

Graduate Awards & Recognitions

Undergraduate Awards & Recognitions

Each year, graduating seniors have the opportunity to nominate an instructor for the Award for Faculty Excellence in Teaching. The recipient of this year’s award is Dr. Gunwha Oh. Geography majors shared their appreciation for Gunwha with their nominations:

• “I loved the way she taught, how she structured her classes, and made an effort to know the students on a more personal level.”
• “She was so helpful and always happy to meet with me to explain concepts and any roadblocks in the homework. She motivated me to be more present in class, even during COVID and was always understanding from a student’s perspective.”
• "She's always ready to help and guide her students at any given time. I can only say thanks to her, I managed to succeed in ending my last geography course with a proud feeling :) Thank you Dr. Oh from the student who ran to get you coffee because I couldn't contain my gratefulness when you lent me a hand!”
• “She was flexible with the given time that she gave me with assignments. Her explanation and direction in her assignments taught me some skills that I was able to pick up and learn and use it as tools for when in the future if I ever get a job, I am able to reuse those tools I learned from her.”
• “Dr. Oh is always so kind and understanding of the classes’ needs. Taking courses with her as my professor during the height of the pandemic gave me security that not only my learning would be rewarded but that any challenges I faced would be empathized with. Her emails to the class each week that had phrases like, ‘I am so proud of you for making progress this far’ and ‘Great work! I am so pleased! Thank you!’ elevated my passion for what I was studying because the positivity that was being shared was infectious. Overall, her real aptitude for the topics she was teaching and her caring nature made me feel supported in whatever triumphs or challenges I faced during the courses.”
• “Gunwha’s courses taught me so much about development and really pushed me to think outside the box and learn outside of class.”

The 25th Annual Geography Undergraduate Research Symposium remains live on the Department of Geography website and features the award winners noted above as well as many other impressive projects in the online Symposium Gallery.