University of Alabama Department of Geography

🗓️ Mark your calendars for the Friday colloquium!

A huge congratulations to all the winners celebrated at the Department of Geography and the Environment Annual Awards Day! 🌍🎉

See y'all tomorrow!

Our department is happy to share that Dr. Xinyue Ye has been elected as a 2025 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science — one of the most prestigious honors in the scientific community.
Election as an AAAS Fellow recognizes “scientifically and socially distinguished achievements” and represents a lifetime honor conferred by peers.
Congratulations to Dr. Ye on this well-deserved recognition of outstanding contributions to research and scholarship! 👏

2025 AAAS Fellows | American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) AAAS proudly congratulates the newly elected 2025 Fellows! In 2025, the AAAS Council elected 449 members as Fellows of AAAS. Election as a Fellow honors members whose efforts on behalf of the advancement of science or its applications in service to society have distinguished them among their peers a...

Colloquium reminder for tomorrow!

Powerful conversation on climate violence with Peter Schwartzstein at UA this Wednesday (3–4 pm).

Dr. Seth Appiah-Opoku from our department has been honored with the AAG Distinguished Teaching Award (2026 AAG Honors)!

Seth has spent nearly three decades modeling what student-centered, globally engaged geography education looks like - pairing rigorous interdisciplinary teaching with experiential learning (including international field programs in Ghana), and mentoring students who have gone on to lead in planning, academia, and public service.

Huge congratulations, Seth! This recognition is so well deserved, and we’re proud to celebrate you! 👏 The University of Alabama J. Frank Barefield Jr. College of Arts & Sciences

https://www.aag.org/2026-aag-awards-recognition/

Our department is proud to share that on November 21, 2025, the City of Sunyani, Ghana, recognized Dr. Seth Appiah-Opoku for his visionary leadership and continued dedication to international cooperation.
He championed a partnership between Tuscaloosa Sister Cities International and the City of Sunyani in 2011 and has since used the city as the training ground for the UA in Ghana Service-Learning Program.
The citation honors Dr. Appiah-Opoku’s sustained efforts in cultivating and advancing the partnership between Tuscaloosa and Sunyani. Congratulations on this meaningful recognition!

We are incredibly proud of our outstanding students who rocked the SEDAAG this year! ✌

A big shout-out to Claire Kennedy (Merle C. Prunty Scholarship), Nishat Tasnim Sumaya (Best MS paper award), Basit Akinade (Best graduate poster award - honorable mention) and Hailey Richardson (Student Representative to SEDAAG for 25-26)!

📚Claire Kennedy is a fourth-year undergraduate student studying Geography and Spanish. Her interests lie in transportation and community-centered planning. She is involved in the Lab for Location Science, where she is working on a campus bike lane mapping project and over the summer, worked on a routing optimization project for a rural healthcare clinic in northern Thailand. Outside of the geography department, she is the Junior Program Coordinator for La Escuelita de Inglés, a free English class for Spanish-speaking adults in Tuscaloosa. She was awarded the Merle C. Prunty Scholarship, that is given annually to an outstanding undergraduate in the Southeastern Division of the American Association of Geographers (SEDAAG) who demonstrates strong academic performance and promise for a future career in Geography.

🏆Nishat Tasnim Sumaya is a Master’s student in the Department of Geography & the Environment working under the supervision of Dr. Jason Senkbeil. She participated in the Honors Competition at the SEDAAG Annual Meeting 2025, where she presented the first chapter of her thesis, “Assessing Climate Trends in Bangladesh Using the Spatial Synoptic Classification.”
The paper can be found at: https://lnkd.in/eQVD8fwb

🎖️Basit Akinade is a second-year Ph.D. student who presented a poster titled "Multi-Sensor Network Design for Inland Flood Detection"

🤝 Hailey Richardson is a Ph.D. student who also presented her research on drug flow along major highways and how crime clustering spatial statistics can reveal clearer patterns when we account for spatial relationships. She will be the student representative to SEDAAG for 25-26 to be held in Alabama.