Facilities

The Department of Geography is based in Gunter Hall.

Gunter Hall houses lecture rooms and faculty offices of the department, as well as a student lounge & computer lab.  The department operates two dedicated instructional computer labs which provide ample opportunity for faculty to engage students in applied, hands-on instruction and research in mapping and geospatial technologies.  The department also houses a more specialized Unmanned Aircraft Systems/ Remote Sensing lab with high performance workstation computers configured for processing and handling of larger datasets.  The UAS/RS Lab, funded in part by a workforce development grant from the Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC), features a suite of associated equipment.  Software in our labs include the ESRI suite, ENVI, SPSS, GeoDa, Adobe Creative Cloud, AutoCAD, hydrologic modeling programs, and Pix4D Mapper Pro.

In addition to the computer laboratory facilities, the Department of Geography also maintains a Sediment and Soils laboratory suite with standard equipment needed to conduct a diverse range of investigations and analysis.  In 2014, a joint venture between the Departments of Geography and Chemistry resulted in a successful Appalachian Regional Commission (ARC) grant application that enabled additional analysis capabilities, mainly geochemical equipment, to be added to the laboratory.