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Each month, Texas State University President Dr. Kelly Damphousse sits down with faculty members, staff, students, alumni, and community members for a conversation about all things TXST — the past, the present, and the bright future of the university.
Part of the TXST Podcast Network: https://www.txst.edu/podcast-network.html
- There's an interesting study that just came out recently about when teachers started taking computers in the classroom to replace textbooks and handwriting things. And there's actually been some learning loss associated with that because the teachers may not be skilled or there may be something inherently important taking notes and writing things down and underlining in a book as opposed to reading in a computer. So it doesn't always make it better, the learning part.
- Yeah.
- I agree, I agree. I like to be able to look at the book and underline and highlight things, absolutely, and write what my teacher's telling me as well.
- I do remember when I was in college, someone told me that if you sleep with your textbook under your pillow at night, it'll help you prepare for the test the next day. And apparently you subliminally when you're tossing and turning, you feel the book-
- Osmosis.
- Yeah, through osmosis. And so, I don't know if it actually ever worked, but I used to do that. But you can't do that with your laptop. Hey, Bobcats, Kelly Damphousse here, president of Texas State University, and welcome to the podcast that we call "The Current", where we meet with faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends of the university to learn more about what's happening at Texas State. And I'm really excited today to have my friend, Joann Zadrozny, join us to talk about her pathway to Texas State, and then talk a little bit about geography, which is kind of fun. So Joann, why don't you start by telling us about how you got here, your pathway, your Texas State story?
- Yeah, absolutely. So I was born and raised in Connecticut. Both of my parents immigrated to Connecticut from Poland. My father literally came off the boat and then my mom came later in her life, so not the boat.
- So they didn't come together then?
- No, they did not. Yap, they met in Connecticut. There's a lot of Polish communities in Connecticut.
- I think it was pretty common for immigrants to kind of go to a place 'cause their family members are invited them to come and so on.
- Yes. Yeah, absolutely. So there's this great Polish community center where we are in Connecticut and that's where they met dancing. So anyway, I'm from Connecticut and I just kind of loved education and had some really great elementary school teachers. So I always idolized to become a teacher and that's why I went to Southern Connecticut State University to get my elementary education degree there. Once I was there, I found out that all education majors had to have a second major and a lot of the students were doing psychology or history, right? Something that was going to help them. And I wanted to be different. I wanted to stick out, right? I didn't want to have the second major that all the other student teachers had. So my first semester, I was enrolled in a geography class and the professor was so excited and exuberant and loved talking about infrastructure and just all of these things about geography that I had no idea about. And the next day, I signed up to become a major.
- So many people choose their major, I think, by taking an introduction class and going, "Oh, this is my thing."
- Yap, absolutely. So it was the perfect blend of education, and then geography. And as I got later on in my career, one of my professors there suggested that I look into graduate school. I was really into research and doing research projects and papers during my studies at Southern. So he suggested that I look at Texas State University because he knew of the strong geography education component that was here.
- So our very first Ph.D. program was in geography department.
- Absolutely, yeah. The first Ph.D. was in geo ed. So, and there is such a strong emphasis on geography education here with the Gamma Theta Upsilon, which is the honor society for geography. And so, I was like, yeah, absolutely, that's a great fit. I wanted to get out of the snow. So anyways, I came to Texas State and got my master's degree in geography education and then I continued on with my Ph.D., graduated in 2018 with that. And then, I've been fortunate enough to stay working at the Gilbert M. Grosvenor Center for Geographic Education, which is in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies, since, so that was back in 2012. So I've been here for over 15 years.
- Wow, that's great. First as a student, and now you're an alumnus, but now you're also an employee as well. So, I remember taking a geography class when I was... it may have been like social studies or something like that. We had a geography unit and what I remember most was just coloring maps. And so it was like, and that's probably like traditional geography, but geography isn't just about maps. It's more than that, right? 'Cause there's kind of cultural geography and so on. Tell us the difference about that.
- Yeah, so there's so much to geography. And unfortunately, right? Coloring maps is like the go-to activity for teachers.
- We're memorizing all the rivers and... Yeah.
- Absolutely. So geography is a lot more than that. It is one of the oldest fields of inquiry dating back to ancient civilizations, right? They wanted to understand and map the earth. So geography, if you look at it on a continuum, you can have physical geography on one end, which is the study of hydrology, biogeography, geomorphology, climatology, meteorology, geology and natural hazards. Oh, and oceanography, right? All of those things are the physical geography side. On the other side of the continuum, you have the human geography where we're examining culture, migration, population, economics, urban and rural systems, geopolitics and just political geography. So what geographers do is that we fall somewhere on that spectrum, on that continuum, and we're studying these fields and then the human environment interaction and what's happening there. And then, we use geospatial technologies and tools like GIS, GPS, LiDAR remote sensing, to visualize and analyze these data. So because geography is so vast, that's why I think there's such that big misconception of what geography is because we study culture, but so do anthropologists, right? But geographers are looking at the where and the why there. We're digging onto that, how does the humans impact the environment and therefore the environment impact humans? So that's what the geographers study, that's what we study. I focus on how to better train our teachers to teach that way of geography and understand all of that to geography and how do students learn best about geography. So coloring maps is not the best way to learn geography, but it is, again, the starting point, right? Where we want our elementary students to start. 100% that memorization of locations, longest rivers, highest mountains. You need that basic knowledge of geographic information. And then, we wanna build on that throughout K-12 and then university. And it's going to help you get a career no matter what career you choose. It's so valuable, geographic knowledge.
- I remember, I'm interested in cartography. I do love maps and there's a phenomenon out there that's like, there's a map that's drawn to real-world scale because we're used to seeing kind of the flat map and Greenland looks huge and Australia looks small and so on, and South America looks the same size as North America and so on. But it's interesting, the perspective, that we think of the world is based on our introduction to geography through certain kinds of maps. But maps are evolving now too and we have a better sense of them because of GIS, 'cause we can see things from space and so on.
- Yeah, absolutely. When we started, right? Cartography, a map was always distorted. There was always something wrong with the map. And so, it was-
- 'Cause apparently the world is a globe, I'm told. It's not flat.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Just wanted to spell that myth, right?
- Exactly. No, the Earth is round. Absolutely. What's interesting about that though is that students these days, they're not looking at physical maps. They're not looking at the maps and actually understanding all of these things like you and I did growing up, right? We didn't have cellphones and GPS. So we have a different connection to maps than this generation does and trying to have them understand digital maps and then putting themselves in that spatial world is definitely been a different challenge in having them understand the world and understand maps just in themselves. But yeah, it is different and what we're exploring with geographic research right now. So, yeah.
- You know what's interesting, I think there's a phenomenon out there. Maybe you can talk about this. When I was young way before you were even born, I was driving around and I just learned how to get from place to place, right? And we had maps and so on. But we use visual cues to remember how to get certain places. And now, I've gotten super lazy. Like I use my GPS to get to STAR Park. I know there's a way of getting there, but it'll do the fastest way depending on traffic and so on. But I've grown so dependent on the map in my car that I've kinda lost-
- Your mental map.
- My mental map, right? Is that a thing?
- Yeah, oh, absolutely. Mental maps, we start them as a young kid, right? Playing around in our neighborhood, knowing how to get to our friend's house and how to get home, right? We all have these mental maps of the fastest way to get to the grocery store or get to school. I remember when I first moved here, I went all the way to Austin, to the Walmart there, because it was the Walmart I saw on the drive from Austin Airport to Texas State University, right? So in my mind, that was the only Walmart on my radar until I became more familiar with San Marcos and realized, oh, there's one 10 minutes down the road. I don't need to be driving up I-35. But yeah, your mental map evolves based upon just all of you taking it in, right? Living in the space. And that's also what we call in geography, right? Understanding a space, the difference of a place and a space, right? Once you're here, you give recognition to your place. Texas State University, San Marcos, is a place, right? That culture that we have here. So our mental maps do change. We rely on them, but sometimes traffic. We need to know what the traffic pattern is and then maybe we wanna take that different route, right? So that's where the GPS comes in handy.
- Does come in handy for sure. Now technology is changing things a lot. When I was a young researcher, I was a criminologist and I was looking at, I'd heard about this thing called crime mapping.
- Oh, yeah.
- And actually one of the criminologists here at Texas State had a little specialty in that area. And the technology was super complicated. So I hired a grad student, he went to Chicago, he took classes in ArcView and ArcGIS, came back and he said, "I can't explain it to you, but I'm gonna do these things." So we started doing crime mapping. And I'm guessing now that crime mapping and mapping of that sort, creating choropleth maps and maybe a time series analysis, how things change over time, must be so much simpler now with the advent of maybe even AI technology but even before that, probably.
- Oh, yeah, absolutely. Like you said, ArcView, ArcMap, right? Those are kind of ancient now.
- Yeah, thank you for saying that . No, but I get it though. But it was super complicated and it took a lot of work. And if you invested a lot of time in that, you're probably thinking, man, I should have taken up coding or something instead.
- Yeah, no, but the technology is definitely so much easier. They've made it more friendlier for just the average person, but also, I mean, geographers use it all the time to create maps 'cause we know exactly what data points we wanna put on it, layers, all of that stuff. So there's a lot easier ways than the ancient ArcView that were harder and definitely took a lot longer time to process.
- Well, it took forever. In fact, the first time we started doing it, we were just basically printing a map and looking at addresses and putting dots with a pen. And then, we discovered how this technology to work, it would do it for you, but it was almost faster to do it by hand 'cause you had to invest so much time in the map. How is technology changing how you teach geography now?
- We try and incorporate, like in the K-12 setting, as much GIS as we can. There's ways to do it. It's hard to do 'cause not all schools have the technology and also the technology isn't always reliable. You need to have fast internet. You have to be able to understand it yourself. And a lot of these teachers that are teaching geography aren't familiar with geography or geospatial technologies, right? Or GIS. So in order to teach it to a bunch of students, it's difficult. So we try to train as many teachers as we can with the technology, but it's hit or miss. There's going to be ways to improve it. We have some great geography educator researchers and in our department that are looking at ways to enhance geospatial technology learning in the classroom. But it definitely helps the students get more of a spatial perspective as well though when they do get to use the technology in the correct way and in a positive way. It reinforces ideas. It gets them to see the world outside of them. They're all stuck in their little classrooms in their towns and may not know the bigger outside. So geospatial technology has allowed them to get this view. Like virtual field trips are really great for students to use as well because they get to go explore any of these battles, right? Historical battles or the westward movement through virtual field trips. So with the increasing of technology advancement, right? It's just going to get better and better. We just have to make sure we do the research to make sure that it's actually improving the students' learning of geography.
- There's an interesting study that just came out recently about when teachers started taking computers in the classroom to replace textbooks and handwriting things. And there's actually been some learning loss associated with that because the teachers may not be skilled or there may be something inherently important in taking notes and writing things down and underlining in a book as opposed to reading in a computer. So it doesn't always make it better, the learning part.
- Yeah. I agree, I agree. I like to be able to look at the book and underline and highlight things, absolutely, and write what my teacher's telling me as well.
- I think there's some memory to it when you mechanically write something down. Your brain remembers it better than if you type it all out. I do remember when I was in college, someone told me that, if you sleep with your textbook under your pillow at night, it'll help you prepare for the test the next day. And apparently subliminally, when you're tossing and turning, you feel the book.
- That osmosis.
- Yeah, through osmosis. And so, I don't know if it actually ever worked, but I used to do that. But you can't do that with your laptop, and so, yeah.
- No, no.
- I wanna talk about two areas that I think are really interesting that you're really involved with. The first is this idea of powerful geography. And I was fascinated by the little bit I read, but I'd love for you to share with our listeners about what that is.
- Yeah, so powerful geography is this teaching and learning approach that we've developed at the Grosvenor Center. Dr. Boehm, Dr. Solem and myself have been the key makers in it. And it's all about making geography relevant to our students by connecting with their interests and aspirations, both in their life and the career. So we want to purposely show them the value of a geographic background, right? Having strong geographic knowledge and it's going to help them in no matter what career they decide to do. We have developed so many resources on our Powerful Geography website that highlight geography content in over 200 different jobs that span all six different career paths. So whether you're looking into business, building, the creative, health, helping or nature path, geography is going to help you in one of those aspects, right? One of the different geographic knowledge that's out there from physical to human and all in between, right? So that is what we're doing with powerful geography, is just making sure we show the relevancy of geography to these students.
- Yeah, I think that's so important because so many students, how many times have people said, "Well, when am I ever gonna use algebra?" Well, it turns out you don't use algebra a lot, but your capacity to do geometry actually is pretty useful in some skills like carpentry and so on. And probably the same is said about geography. Like what am I ever need to know what the longest river is in South America, right?
- 100%.
- Well, that's part of it. Knowing that stuff's useful, but there's also stuff that's very valuable about just understanding the world around you and the context of where you are, right?
- Yeah, absolutely. And so, we're trying to make a difference with K-12, mostly high school, middle school and high school students, to show that you're going to need geography. And this is gonna be the most fun probably class you'll take in middle school or high school.
- Yeah, it should be, right?
- And then, you're going to go to Texas State and take a geography class here with one of our great professors and learn even more about how important geography is.
- Again, I think if you get past the, why am I learning this part, if you can explain that, then it makes the learning part fun. Okay, I can see where this is gonna go. One of the things I love about that is it really goes back to our roots at Texas State where we were formed to teach teachers how to teach. And so, that's what powerful geography is doing. Now are you working with the current teachers to pass that information on? How does that work?
- Yeah, so we have also the Texas Alliance for Geographic Education here at Texas State, and that is a network of in-service professional or in-service teachers, geography teachers across the whole state. And we travel across to provide professional development workshops and geography to all the teachers who want to learn.
- Anyone who wants to learn.
- Anyone who wants to learn about geography. And so, we've been sharing powerful geography with them for the last five, six years.
- Wow, that's great. Now the second thing I wanna talk to you about is something I think is pretty interesting. We're adding to the number of Ph.D. programs we have at Texas State. I think we've nearly doubled the number of Ph.D. programs. What surprises people, I think, is that some of our Ph.D. programs are actually online and you're pretty involved with this new online geography Ph.D. program. Can you talk a little bit about that?
- Yeah, absolutely. So we were very fortunate enough to have created the first online, or we transformed our face-to-face Ph.D. in geographic education degree program to an online format and that was approved back in 2020. So before COVID hit and everyone else was scrambling to get online, we were already up and running for both our master's and our Ph.D. geo ed programs were online. And it has been a tremendous success because we're dealing with teachers who are in the classrooms, have full-time jobs, and they can't relocate to San Marcos. So we've been able to reach a lot more people with our online Ph.D. program and it's been a real, real success and that's all because of Dean Golato and Dean Brennan who are huge supporters of the program as well.
- There are people who are time-and-place bound that they just can't leave where they are, especially if they're teachers. They can't give up their job, they can't drive here or drive to the nearest university, that online is the only option for them to get a master's or a Ph.D. And there are so few options out there and some of the places that may be offering them may not have the same technical skills that we can provide from the instructors. And so, yeah, what a great opportunity for people who are out there looking for our graduate degree to be able to get it online.
- Yeah, absolutely.
- And you care about the quality, right? 'Cause you want it to be as similar as experience as the face-to-face is, but just in the online environment.
- And we've tried to create a lot of opportunities for online students to interact with each other. We try and bring them down to the university over the summertime to create that atmosphere and networking. We make sure that they go to national conferences for geography education and build that Bobcat community from afar.
- Joann, thank you so much for coming and sharing with us about what's going on in geography and your own special journey here. We're so glad to have you here and-
- Thank you so much.
- We love this program. I think it really is a special way for people to learn about the world around them. The fact that we're one of the first Ph.D. programs in the country that's gone online, but also we've got this renowned Ph.D. program, which is the center of our, I guess the beginning of the Run to R1 really started with geography. And so, I'm really grateful for what the department does and I'm so glad you came and shared a little bit today about stuff.
- Thank you.
- Sometimes I have no idea what we're gonna talk about when we start and I didn't know we would talk about GPS and getting lost and the driving around. But it is fascinating to think about how geography really is. We're doing it all the time.
- Yeah. We really are.
- Just when we drive from place to place and technology is changing everything as well. All right, Joann, now it's your turn to be the podcast host. So they always send a question, these come from viewers and listeners. I never know what the question is, and so fire away. I'll do my best to answer it.
- All right. What's a piece of technology you secretly wish had never been invented?
- Holy cow.
- Ooh.
- A piece of technology that I wish had never been invented. Here's something. I don't know if I'd wish it had never been invented, but I am concerned, even in my own life, but in the lives of others, about how attached we become to our phone. Just today, I heard about a university that's creating social media or phone-free zones. You can go in there and just talk to people and not be on your phone. And sometimes it really bothers me. I'll walk into a place and I'll see people sitting in line and they're all on their phone and I'm the worst about it. Like I'll be waiting for the elevator, I'll pull it out when I get in the elevator. I'm almost like bothered that someone got in the elevator with me 'cause I can't scroll or whatever. So I think it's not that I don't like the technology, although sometimes I think it's pretty evil, but social media, I think, the ubiquitousness of it is really... How it's just interacting with every aspect of our life now that I think it's kind of changing how we engage. As a sociologist and as a criminologist, I think a lot about how we're inspired and we're reflecting other people and we're affecting people that are affecting us and so on. And when you spend so much time online and you see so much negative stuff for example, that can really affect who you are as well. So anyways, what about you?
- Ooh, I would have to say probably the AI generation of deepfakes.
- [Kelly] Yeah, deepfakes is terrible.
- I think that is a scary, scary piece of technology right there.
- Yeah, I think about that a lot, how easy it would be for someone to create a video of you or me and post it and no one knowing if it was real or not. And then, by the time you debunk it, it's too late 'cause that thing exists forever. So, thank you so much, Joann, for joining us.
- Thank you.
- Thank you for joining us as well. It's always great to hear from people about what's going on at Texas State University. Join us next time on "The Current", when we talk about what's happening at Texas State. All right, States Up, everyone.