Undergraduate Major Overview

Where your interests intersect.
Undergraduate Program

The Department of Geography in Boulder provides a bridge that intersects the things that interest you with the things you care about. Here, undergrads receive a broad, liberal arts education that integrates the study of the human activity and the natural environment, with concentrations in physical geography, human geography, and environment-society relations, or geographic information science.

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Compass

Choose Your Path

Explore Our Four Specialized Tracks

You may choose to follow a general geography major, where you’ll study both physical and human geography or concentrate your studies in one of four specialized tracks listed below.

Physical and Environmental Science

Climatology, geomorphology, biogeography, arctic and alpine systems, hydrology, and global change

Physical Geography integrates and interrelates landforms, water, soils, climate, and vegetation as the major natural elements of the environment. This study focuses on the zone of the land, ocean, and atmosphere containing most of the world's organic life. Physical geography not only describes natural phenomena near the surface of the earth but, more importantly, seeks explanations of how and why the physical and biological processes act as they do.

Data Science

Geographic Information Science (GIS), cartography, remote sensing, drones, and computer programming

The widespread adoption of digital technology coupled with management of very large spatial data sets has led to the development of GIS. Geographers use remote sensing methods for collecting and integrating geographical data. They utilize cartography and geographic information systems to uncover spatial patterns and trends, to reconstruct past environmental conditions and to predict future scenarios. Additionally, the societal, political and ethical implications of geographic information in policy and decision-making are also an important component of study in GIS.

Human Geography and Environment-Society Relations

Population, political, urban, social, and cultural geography

From its earliest development as an academic field, geography has been concerned with the relations between people and their environments. Societies adapt and transform the environments they inhabit, depend upon the use of resources and reduction of hazards for their survival and material well-being, and assign meanings to the environment that vary over place and time. The processes under study derive from distinct, but interactive, substructures: economic, socio-political, and cultural. Geographers in this specialty typically investigate problems associated with locational strategies and human decisions. These problems include things like: analysis of regional markets, racial segregation in cities, migration flows, hazardous sites, international development, medieval landscape patterns, or formulation of impact statements. The University of Colorado has special strength in land and water resource issues in the American West, Africa, Latin America, and Asia.Ìý

Quick Links to Course Schedules

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"I chose to attend CU for its Geography Department—and it was the best decision I ever made. The variety of topics and experiences fueled my curiosity and drive for Geography."Ìý— Emily Colgan, B.A. in Geography

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