Background of PSU-Harrisburg:

Founded in 1966 as the Penn State Capitol Campus, PSU-Harrisburg was built on property originally sold to the PSU community by the US Department of Defense for $1 after it was used as part of the Harrisburg Air National Guard Base at Olmsted Air Force Base. The first students graduated from the PSU Capitol Campus in 1968, with the first on-campus graduation taking place in 1969. The school gained college status in 1986 and was subsequently renamed the Pennsylvania State University at Harrisburg—Capital College. Two years later, the college granted its first doctorate degrees. In 2001, the college welcomed its first four-year undergraduates, with its first student housing complex opening in 2002. Penn State Harrisburg was considered fully transitioned into a four-year college by 2004. Today, Penn State Harrisburg operates as one of the 24 campuses in the Penn State system and offers 2 associate, 34 baccalaureate, 19 master's, and 3 doctoral degree programs as well as certificate, certification, and joint degree programs. 

Mr. H has been a visiting adjunct professor at PSU-Harrisburg in the Department of Behavioral Science and Teacher Education since 2022.

Course Perspective:

World Regional Geography examines a world that is undergoing political, economic, social, and environmental transformations at many different spatial scales. Viewing content through the lens of the Six Essential Elements of Geography (National Geographic Society) and other geographic concepts such as scale, place, and human-environment interaction, this course examines international linkages, such as economic globalization, which help to forge a world community. The course also examines more regional and localized manifestations that contradict our understanding of a global community and examines various regions' physical systems, cultures, economic systems, environmental challenges, and political realities. Larger concepts such as North and South, developed and developing, and ecological degradation and climate change, take on new meaning when they are explored at a regional level.

Examples of Student Presentations for Cumulative Course Learning 

GEO. 040: World Regional Geography

Course Perspective:

Geography of International Affairs uses the organizing principle of geographic scale to examine the spatial patterns of and interrelationships among political processes and institutions. Particular emphasis is given to developing an integrative view of how global, national, local, and individual scale processes interact to produce patterns of peace and conflict. The course analyzes how the actions of individuals, states, and other political actors are influenced by their dynamic geographical contexts. The political geography approach does not simply discuss war, peace, nationalism, terrorism, and religious organizations in isolation; instead, it concentrates on understanding the integration of these processes, and how their integration mediates political decisions, outcomes, and concerns with the geopolitical context, broadly defined as how spaces and places are combinations of the political and the social, the domestic and the international, the global and the local - and how it partially determines the form and outcomes of politics. As a course in geography, Geography of International Affairs encourages students to interpret political problems, actions, and disputes through the lens of the Six Essential Elements of Geography (National Geographic). Further, this course also encourages students to examine and interpret international affairs through the lens of different geopolitical theories. In this sense, students are encouraged to adopt the role of political geographers.

Examples of Student Presentations for Cumulative Course Learning 

GEO. 128 - Geography of International Affairs