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Friday Night Keynote
Framing Nature at the Grand Canyon: From Rim to River and Beyond
Friday Dinner Keynote Speaker - 7pm
Friday Dinner Keynote Speaker - 7pm
Dr. Yolonda Youngs
Professor of Geography and Environmental Studies, CSU San Bernardino
Author of Framing Nature: The Creation of an American Icon at the Grand Canyon, winner of prestigious John Brinkerhoff Jackson Prize (American Association of Geographers)
Keynote Talk
Framing Nature at the Grand Canyon: From Rim to River and Beyond
The Grand Canyon of the Colorado River is an internationally known feature of the North American landscape, attracting more than five million visitors each year to one of the most visited national parks in the United States. In this talk, Dr. Yolonda Youngs will discuss the results of over 15 years of fieldwork and archival research that reveals how the Grand Canyon became an iconic symbol of nature that shaped national policies on environmental management, water resources, wildlife conservation, park visitation, and environmental justice. Of interest to students, Dr. Youngs will present behind-the-scenes views of the development and implementation of this project including a novel mixed-methods approach combining visual content analysis, interpretation of archival documents, and critical landscape analysis informed by extensive fieldwork in the Greater Grand Canyon Region (GGCR) including rim-to-river hikes and a three-week raft trip down the Colorado River. This project provides a template that could be applied to other national parks or any iconic locations. Dr. Youngs’ examination of 150 years of thousands of popular photographs, postcards, and maps provides surprising insights about how environmental perception influences stewardship, sustainability, and biodiversity and how places, especially national parks, are transformed into national symbols.
Biography:
Dr. Yolonda Youngs is a Professor in the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at California State University San Bernardino. Her expertise is in Long Term Environmental Monitoring (LTEM) in national parks and international protected areas, conservation of natural resources, environmental policy and management, outdoor recreation, and Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Her regional specialties are the western United States and Europe. She has taught undergraduate classes and graduate seminars as well as mentored over 40 undergraduate student research projects, graduate theses, and dissertation committees at California State University San Bernardino, Oklahoma State University, and Idaho State University. She teaches classes in environmental sustainability, conservation and natural resources, field methods, national parks and public lands, environmental justice, social science GIS, regional geography of Europe and is developing a new course about coastal resources management.
Dr. Youngs has written or co-authored over 30 journal articles, books, book chapters, and book reviews, scientific reports, and essays featuring her research across the U.S. National Park Service system. Her second book Framing Nature: The Creation of an American Icon at the Grand Canyon (2024, University of Nebraska Press) won the 2025 John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize from the American Association of Geographers, one of the highest awards in the discipline. Her first book is The American Environment Revisited: Environmental Historical Geographies of the United States (2019 paperback, with Dr. Geoffrey Buckley). She maintains field research sites in Grand Teton, Yellowstone, Grand Canyon, and Channel Islands national parks. Her research is funded by the National Science Foundation, U.S. National Park Service, the Cooperative Ecosystem Services Network (CESU), and the San Bernardino Valley Municipal Water District.
Dr. Youngs’s work is recognized by the 2025 Outstanding Research Award (California State University San Bernardino, College of SBS), an Apple Distinguished Educator award (national award for digital innovation with tablets from Apple, Inc.), Outstanding University Researcher Award (university-wide award, Idaho State University), and a Scholar-In-Residence award at University of New Mexico, among others. She is a founding member and now serving as the Past Chair of the American Association of Geographers Protected Areas Specialty Group (AAG PASG), with previous service as the Vice Chair, Chair, and Board Member. She is an active member in the U.S. National Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS-USA), the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN), International Geographical Union (IGU), and the Royal Geographic Society (with the Institute of British Geographers). Dr. Youngs served on the APCG Distinguished Service Committee (2018 – 2024) and the Executive Council as Secretary and, later, as the Regional Councilor for to the AAG (2015 - 2022).
Learn more about Dr. Youngs’ work at CSUSB https://www.csusb.edu/profile/yyoungs
See upcoming book talks and events at LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/yolondayoungs/
Saturday Afternoon Keynote
Nourishing Geography: Strengthening our Community in Challenging Times
Please also see the recent AAG President's Column "A Matter of Survival: Building Better Connections Between High School and College Geography"
Keynote Address - Saturday 1:30-2:40PM
Keynote Address - Saturday 1:30-2:40PM
Dr. William (Bill) Moseley
President of the American Association of Geographers (AAG)
DeWitt Wallace Professor of Geography, Macalester College
Author of the recently published book Decolonizing African Agriculture: Food Security, Agroecology, and the Need for Radical Transformation
Keynote Talk (UCen Room 258)
Nourishing Geography: Strengthening our Community in Challenging Times
These are challenging times for American higher education and geography has not been immune to these headwinds. While times of turmoil are disconcerting, these can also be times of opportunity if the discipline is proactive and strategic. This talk discusses five such challenges that also represent opportunities for the AAG and geography. First, we need to actively build community and socialize newcomers into geography. Geographers from different types of institutions and backgrounds must all feel welcome. Second, despite cutbacks in public research funding, geography needs to continue to lead with sound, creative and cutting-edge scholarship focused on societally relevant questions.
Geography must actively seek to communicate its research to broader publics and to connect its insights to the policy sphere. Third, American geography is situated in a broader intellectual network of geographers around the globe. Foreign born faculty and students have helped sustain and build geography in the US. International connections are also vital for scholarly advancement and mitigating nationalism. Fourth, a healthy discipline needs mechanisms and processes for thoughtfully and inclusively discussing divisive topics. The humanitarian crisis in Gaza, and a membership petition regarding the AAG response to this, is an example of such a difficult topic that is being discussed this fall via an inclusive and participatory process. Finally, American geography’s Achilles' heal has been its relatively small number of undergraduate students.
I argue that addressing this must be a priority for the discipline moving forward. The AAG Task Force on Geography Undergraduate Education, aka the Gen A Project, is actively working on developing strategies to address this problem. While some disciplines may be able to hide in the Ivory Tower during challenging times, geography does not have the luxury to do so. By leveraging its strengths and proactively addressing its weaknesses, geography will not only survive, but thrive.
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