Interview with Dr. Al Stuart

Al Stuart is a native of Roanoke, Virginia. He holds a BS in geology from the University of South Carolina, an MS in geology from Emory University, and a PhD in geography from Ohio State University. In the 1950s he was a research glaciologist in Greenland and Antarctica, earning the U.S. Polar Medal. He began teaching at the University of Tennessee while completing work on his PhD at Ohio State, which he received in 1966. In 1969 he joined the faculty at UNC-Charlotte, where he chaired the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences for eighteen years. During his career he has served as a community planner in Roanoke, Virginia, written or co-edited twenty-one books, penned numerous articles, and garnered $1.5 million in research grants and contracts. His most recent book is The North Carolina Atlas: Portrait for a New Century (2000). Stuart retired from UNC-Charlotte in 1999 but continues his research as a professor emeritus of geography and as editor of the Web site “The North Carolina Atlas Revisited” (http://www.ncatlasrevisited.org/index.html).

Museum of History staffer Beth Crist recently spoke with Dr. Stuart. Her interview serves as the workshop introduction.

Crist: Geography is a large and interdisciplinary field. Can you provide a fairly simple definition?

Stuart: Geography is a social science that has as its first concern the meaning of location. Other disciplines aren’t as concerned with location, although it’s always a factor in economics, history, anthropology, and everything else really. The discipline is often seen as simply dealing with place geography—knowing where the state capitals or countries are, but that’s just a beginning point. As I understand it, geography has four basic questions.

The first question is what: what are you interested in, be it rivers, populations, cities, economics, etc. The next question addresses where. That’s when you look at the arrangement of the what to the where. It’s where maps come in. The bigger question, and the one that’s less well understood by the general public, is why. Why does this pattern exist, how did it come into being, and what’s the interplay between people and the land, or politics, or the economy, or a whole host of different factors that explain the development of this pattern. Of course history is very important in that because very little happens just today; everything comes out of the past, and understanding how it came to be gives us some ability to understand where it seems to be heading.

The final question, and the really important one to me, is so what? In other words, what does it mean? What are the implications? Why do we need to understand it? If what’s happening, the pattern we see, is not what we want it to be, how do we change it? That gets into public policy issues.

So to me that’s an expression of what geography is. It certainly transcends the general understanding. I’ve had lots of people say to me, “Oh, I didn’t know they taught geography at the college level,” or “We don’t need geography; we know where the county seats are.” We here at UNC-Charlotte have published a number of analytical atlases, in part to demonstrate what geographers do and can do and to show geography’s relevance to the public at large, to business decision makers, students, public officials, schools, and more, by providing a graphics-rich portrayal of a region, how it came to be, and how it’s changed. The term atlas comes from Greek mythology. As punishment for warring against the gods, Zeus made Atlas, a Titan, hold up the earth at arm’s length. That’s what an atlas does best, because it gives a global perspective.

Crist: Why is it important for young people to study geography?

Stuart: Understanding geography is particularly important in this day and age when we’re so involved in global affairs, obviously our involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq but much more. We’re tremendously impacted by the globalization of the economy. There’s a lot being said and concern about the decline of some of the state’s industries, such as textiles and apparel and furniture, and that’s a direct effect of globalization. We stole those industries away from New England in the late nineteenth century, and now Asia and Latin America are stealing them from us, for the same reason—they can offer cheap labor. I view the textile industry as the first in and the first out: the Industrial Revolution started with the textile industry but has moved from New England to the South and now to Asia and Latin America.

Also, we’ve seen a tremendous growth of foreign-owned businesses and investments in this state. The implication, or the “so what” question, is that the apparel and textile industries have been spread in rural areas, and are now leaving. Meanwhile, the higher-tech industries are concentrating in the larger cities, especially around Charlotte and Raleigh, which is causing a shift in the distribution of people, which is creating a hardship in rural areas where they’re losing their basic employment. There’s little hope that new jobs will come in behind those companies, even though the state makes heroic efforts to try to attract industry to those places.

Crist: So geography explains a lot.

Stuart: Yes, it’s a helpful perspective. I keep thinking that in the real estate industry, the three most important things about a piece of real estate are location, location, location. That’s essential geography.

Crist: Do you have a favorite aspect of North Carolina geography?

Stuart: I’m interested in the migration of people to this state, because until the 1970s more people were leaving than moving in, but now it’s reversed. Seventy per cent of our growth now is from people moving in from all over the country and the world, which is changing the face of the state dramatically.

Crist: It seems as though human and physical geography are intertwined, so that a geographer must have a thorough understanding of one in order to study the other.

Stuart: It certainly helps, and it was the case for me, as my first two degrees were in geology. I didn’t take a course in geography until I began my doctoral program. It’s not essential, though. Many of my colleagues who are more into economic geography, for example, don’t have much strength in the environmental side of it. But there is an interplay between them. Geographers tend to get specialized. Some are more interested in urban geography; others, in economic geography, or the location of business activities; others are involved with the physical/environmental side, like weather and climate or soils. Here in our department at UNC-Charlotte we have geologists as well because it’s the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, so there’s even a closer collaboration.

Geography is a holistic discipline, a perspective, and I would emphasize that it is as much as anything a perspective, a point of view, on a lot of subject matter that is of interest to other disciplines as well. Sometimes we get too carried away with the differences between disciplines at the university level, when in fact they overlap to a considerable degree. Location is of interest to historians, anthropologists, economists, and so on, but to the geographer it’s the primary concern.

Crist: Do you work a lot with scholars in these other disciplines?

Stuart: Yes. We’ve invited people in other fields—historians, political scientists, educators, and so forth—to contribute to the analytical atlases we’ve published. We ask them to adapt to our point of view, that is, to emphasize the locational aspect of their subject. We also have to acculturate them to using graphics in their work, to use maps and charts to communicate their topic. Geography easily invites a holistic, interdisciplinary perspective.

Crist: What inspired you to study geography?

Stuart: My first two degrees were in geology. After receiving my master’s degree from Emory University, I went into the army. I was stationed in Washington, D.C., doing some incredibly boring work. A call came down from the Corps of Engineers for some geologists to go to Greenland. I said, what the heck, I’ve never been there. I was assigned to work with a civilian research team investigating the frozen ground next to the Greenland Ice Cap. We worked mighty hard all summer long. This was back in 1957, when the Cold War was still pretty intense, and we were expecting the Soviet Union to attack us from over the pole. The U.S. government was building missile launching pads and began to realize that when you put those on frozen ground, bad things can happen, so we were investigating that. I was captivated by the whole environment, the beauty and enormity of the ice cap, and eventually got into the exploration history of the search for the North Pole.

When I came back from Greenland, the Corps of Engineers assigned me to their research lab in Chicago. My career goal at that time was to work in petroleum exploration overseas. I sent my resume to several oil companies, but few were hiring, as oil was a glut on the market—gasoline was twenty cents a gallon—and there was little exploration at the time. I ran an ad in a geology newsletter and mentioned my Greenland experience. I got one response, from the National Science Foundation. They were hiring for the U.S. Antarctic Research Program. It sounded interesting, and I got the job as a research glaciologist. I went to Antarctica and did an oversnow traverse over a largely unexplored area. My job was to dig pits in the snow and read the layering to see the difference between winter and summer snow, which allows you to estimate how much the snow is building up every year for thirty to forty years. I came back from that marvelous experience and went to the associated lab in Ohio State to finish the work. A few years later, the National Science Foundation notified me that one of the mountains in the area where we had traveled had been named after me (Mt. Stuart, at 6,549 feet, is almost as high as North Carolina's Mt. Mitchell, the highest mountain in the eastern United States). It’s an ugly black rock sticking up out of the ice, but it’s mine! I had planned to do more work in Antarctica but decided to stay instead at Ohio State and pursue my doctorate in geography.

Crist: Studying North Carolina geography is very different than exploring Antarctica. What drew you here? And how did you switch from geology to geography?

Stuart: Having gone to college in Virginia, South Carolina, and Georgia in the 1950s, I was aware of the emergence of the Civil Rights movement and also of demographic and economic changes in the South, and that interested me. I thought about studying history, which interested me, but decided it was too far outside my earth science background. I looked into planning and a few other fields, and then discovered geography. I had never taken a course in geography outside of place geography in school, but it happens they have a major doctoral program in geography at Ohio State and I decided to enroll.

The reason I chose geography, in the final analysis, is that I could make use of my experience in polar research and geology while at the same time look into economic and population changes in the South. I’ve been able to do that, and for many years taught courses on the polar regions, the South, urban geography, and my special interest, the geography of manufacturing. All that sounds disparate, but I didn’t have any problems with it.

When I began teaching at UNC-Charlotte in 1969, several colleagues were involved in creating thematic atlases. The first one was the Metrolina Atlas, published in 1972, on the Charlotte metropolitan area. The publisher, UNC Press, asked us to create a similar atlas for the state, which was published in 1975 as The North Carolina Atlas: Portrait of a Changing Southern State. The third one we collaborated on, Land of the South, was published in 1989. Before that was even finished we thought about a redo of the North Carolina Atlas. As soon as that book was published, five days before the 2000 census, it was beginning to get old before it even hit the street. So I was able to raise money to support the creation of a Web site that updates parts of the book. That’s what I’ve been doing since I retired in 1999. We’ll be posting chapters on crime and transportation soon, and hopefully environmental issues shortly. I tell people the Internet is a wonderful thing; you can keep things updated, but because you can, you have to; it’s a beauty and a curse. It keeps me going, gives me a reason to get out of the house every day. As far as I know, no other state has a resource like it.

Crist: Do you have any favorite anecdotes or factual tidbits about North Carolina geography?

Stuart: One thing I appreciate is that North Carolina has one hundred counties, which is a statistician’s dream. It makes calculating percentages so much easier! I’m a native of Virginia and someone once defined North Carolina as a veil of humility between two mounts of conceit, but the response is that North Carolina has much to be humble about. But I find it a very interesting state with a varied landscape.

What has fascinated me in the thirty-five or so years I’ve lived here is the dispersion of the people and economy, and the history of the textile industry. This is one of the most industrial states in the country, but it’s also one of the least urban. That’s contrary to the general trend. We talk about the Industrial Revolution, but it’s often called the Industrial/Urban Revolution because of the close association between the development of manufacturing centers and cities. North Carolina, though, has historically followed a different path. A lot of manufacturing was not in cities but in small towns and rural areas, with textile mills and furniture plants scattered all around. Of course for many years we had the mill villages, sort of self-contained environments in the countryside. The mill developers were strongly encouraged to locate out there so they could control their labor forces better and escape regulation by the towns and cities.

Even though the textile, furniture, and apparel industries are dying, we still have this dispersion, this lack of urbanization. Charlotte is the biggest city in North Carolina, but if you look at all the states and calculate the proportion of the population that lives in the state’s largest city, Charlotte is right at the bottom. It’s changing upwards, but is still very low. That’s part of what fascinates me about this state. At the same time, the state government thinks we’re composed of Mayberries, small towns where Andy Griffith lives and almost everyone is white and knows one another. They continue to offer incentives for companies to locate in these places but none will go there. They tend to neglect the sound development of our larger cities, which are the cash cows that, from my point of view, are going to pay for the improvements in health care and education and so on that need to be provided for rural areas for people who choose to still live there. But they’re not going to get Bank of America there, or Research Triangle Park. They tried the Global Transpark in Kinston, but after about fifteen years it’s still a failure. There’s no there there. They can’t get any businesses to go there because they can’t get the supporting services and skilled labor, so no matter what the state offers it won’t help.

Crist: Do you have any tips for learning or teaching geography in grades K–12?

Stuart: I wish every student would have the opportunity to travel. That’s when you really begin to learn and appreciate geography. It’s so enlightening to see other people and places. I don’t know of anything that contributes more to an appreciation of geography than to travel, even within the United States. I encourage students and teachers to travel. I wish the state had a program in which they would pay teachers to travel, not just for geography but for a better understanding of all social sciences.

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The Five Themes of Geography

The North Carolina Geographic Alliance* provides this explanation of the five themes with North Carolina examples.

I. LOCATION Answers the question “Where?”

Two kinds of location:

Examples:

II. PLACE Answers the question “What is the place like?”

Two characteristics are used to describe a place:

The image a place has in people’s minds is another characteristic of place.

Examples:

III. HUMAN ENVIRONMENT INTERACTIONS How people depend upon, adapt to, and modify their environment.

People depend on the environment to meet basic needs such as water, food, shelter and other resources. People adapt to their environments in the way they dress and the type of buildings they construct. Finally, people modify their environment by changing it - building roads, dams, skyscrapers, and clearing land for a variety of uses. Human Environment Interactions can have positive and/or negative effects.

IV. MOVEMENT How a place is connected with other places.

Movement is the mobility of people, goods, and ideas. Transportation and communication are two important aspects of movement. Cars, trucks, trains, ships, barges, and airplanes are used to move people and goods. Television, radio, telephone, fax, and the computer are common forms of communication. Movement also includes the migrations of people and animals, as well as voyages of discovery and exploration. Trade and global interdependence are important movement concepts.

V. REGIONS What a place has in common with other places.

Regions are areas of the Earth’s surface that are defined by certain unifying characteristics. Regions allow geographers to group places by one or more common characteristics. Regions can be formed based on physical characteristics such as climate, landforms, or crops. Regions can also be based on political and economic characteristics as well as human characteristics such as language, religion, and ethnicity.

Examples:

*The North Carolina Geographic Alliance (NCGA), founded in 1987, is an organization of teachers, geographers, university educators and others interested in geography and geography education. Its purpose is to promote and improve geographic knowledge and understanding and enhance the teaching of geography in North Carolina classrooms. To carry out that mission, the NCGA offers workshops, institutes, and other teacher training programs; distributes educational materials about geography; and promotes geography-oriented activities such as Geography Action!, Geography Awareness Week and the National Geographic Bee. The NCGA is part of the network of state geographic alliances affiliated with the National Geographic Society.

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8Related Web Sites

General Geography

Geography Center
http://www.education-world.com/soc_sci/geography/index.shtml

Geography: The Lost World
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/2496427.stm

K-12 Geography/Economics
http://www.geocities.com/dboals.geo/geog.html

The Lesson Plan Library: Geography
http://school.discovery.com/lessonplans/geog.html

The Nature of Geographic Literacy
http://www.ericdigests.org/pre-925/nature.htm

National Council for Geographic Education
http://www.ncge.org/

National Geographic Xpeditions: Lesson Plans
http://www.nationalgeographic.com/xpeditions/lessons/index.html

Postcard Geography (class project)
http://www.cyberbee.com/pcg/howto.html

U.S. Department of Education Office: Helping Your Child Learn Geography
http://www.ed.gov/pubs/parents/Geography/index.html

USGS: Geography
http://geography.usgs.gov/

Maps

Library of Congress: Geography and Maps: An Illustrated Guide
http://www.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/guide/

Library of Congress: Geography and Map Reading Room
http://www.loc.gov/rr/geogmap/

North Carolina Specific

Geography of North Carolina
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geography_of_North_Carolina

The North Carolina Atlas Revisited
http://www.ncatlasrevisited.org/

North Carolina Demographic and Statistical Data Sources on the Web
http://statelibrary.dcr.state.nc.us/iss/ncdataresources.html

North Carolina Geographic Alliance
http://www.ngsednet.org/community/index.cfm?community_id=180

The North Carolina Geographic Data Clearinghouse
/http://www.cgia.state.nc.us/

North Carolina State Data Center
http://sdc.state.nc.us/

North Carolina State Demographics
http://www.demog.state.nc.us/

ProTeacher! United States Lesson Plans for Elementary School Teachers: North Carolina
http://www.proteacher.com/090135.shtml

U.S. Census: North Carolina QuickFacts
http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/37000.html

Maps

Documenting the American South: Maps
http://docsouth.unc.edu/global/result.html?tgm=Maps.&projid=6

Library of Congress: Old Maps: North Carolina
http://gis.enr.state.nc.us/sid/bin/index.plx?client=zReference,Library_of_Congress&site=9A1M

NC OneMap
http://www.demog.state.nc.us/

North Carolina Maps
http://www.geology.enr.state.nc.us/maps/ncgs_main_maps_page.html

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