2017 Regional Councillor Bios

Please find below, in alphabetical order, bios of four candidates for the 2017 SEDAAG Regional Councillor elections.

 Dr. John Kupfer

 John Kupfer is Professor of Geography and Affiliated Faculty in the School of Earth, Ocean and Environment at the University of South Carolina, where he has been on staff since 2005. He has a history of service to SEDAAG that includes serving as the organizer and local arrangements committee chair for the 2016 Annual Meeting in Columbia, SC, and as a member of the local arrangements committee for the 1998 Annual Meeting in Memphis, TN. He also served as State Representative for Tennessee while at the University of Memphis and as a member of the steering committee, and has been a member of the annual meeting program committee three times. In addition to giving presentations, he has served as a session organizer and paper discussant at past annual meetings. In 2011, he received the SEDAAG Research Honors Award. Regionally, he has given invited lectures at several universities in the Southeast, including the Ellen Churchill Semple Day address at the University of Kentucky. Nationally, he has served on the AAG Honors Committee (2012-2014) and AAG Publications Committee (2007-2010), and he has been very active with the Biogeography Specialty Group, including election to president and the executive board. He has published in many of the top journals in geography and ecology, and as either PI or Co-PI, he has garnered $2.5 million in external funding from a range of sources. He has served on the Senior Advisory Panel for the Geography and Spatial Sciences Program of the National Science Foundation, and in 2016, he was appointed to the National Academy of Sciences Committee on Long-term Management of the Spirit Lake/Toutle River System in Southwest Washington. He has won university-level teaching awards at the University of Arizona and the University of Memphis, and in 2013, he received the Ada B Thomas Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award for being named the top undergraduate advisor at USC.

Dr. James Lowry

I am an associate professor of geography at Georgia Gwinnett College in Lawrenceville, Georgia.  I moved here 2 years ago from the University of New Orleans where I was associate professor and chair of the Department of Geography.  Previous to that I was assistant professor of geography and associate dean of the College of Liberal Arts at Stephen F. Austin State University in Nacogdoches, Texas and associate professor and chair of the Department of Cartography and Geography at East Central University in Ada, Oklahoma.  I completed my PhD in geography at the University of Arizona, my MA in geography at East Carolina University, and my BA at Belmont Abbey College in Belmont, North Carolina.  I joined the AAG and SEDAAG three decades ago and after time in the Pacific Coast and SWAAG I am very happy to be home in SEDAAG.  From 2002-2009 I served on the National Council for Geographic Education Administrative Committee and Executive Planning Board as the Recording Secretary.  I have served as the Executive Secretary of Gamma Theta Upsilon since 2008, as Southwest Regional Councilor in 1999-2006, second vice president in 2007-2008, and as a member of the Executive Committee since 1999.  I am also currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Association of College Honor Societies.  In 1996-1997 I was on the Board of the Environmental Perception and Behavioral Geography Specialty Group, in 1999-2001 I was the Nominations Director of the Cultural Geography Specialty Group, and in 1999-2002 I served as the vice chair, chair, and past chair of the Cartography Specialty Group.  I was a member of the AAG Committee on College Geography in 2002-2003 and on the AAG Committee on College Geography and Careers in 2006-2009 (and served as chair of the committee in 2008-2009).  I was born in Charleston, SC and grew up mostly in Georgia and North Carolina, although since my father was in the US Air Force I also lived in Texas, Libya, and California.  I’m a human geographer (although I always really wanted to be a physical geographer) with the bulk of my research in perceptual regions.  My first publication, on the South as a perceptual region, was published in Southeastern Geographer in 1989.  I spent the summers of 1997, 1998, and 1999 as a Summer Faculty Fellow at the Global Hydrology and Climate Center of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, in Huntsville, Alabama using geospatial technologies to study deforestation in the Peten and searching for evidence of Mayan ruins.  As I constantly tell my students, I use geography to help them learn how to learn and see myself as a proponent of the geographic approach (to learning).  I would love the opportunity to represent my home region as the SEDAAG Regional Councilor.  I believe my experience in other AAG regions, and my commitment to SEDAAG, would help make me a better representative for the AAG’s best region.

Dr. Scott Markwith

Scott Markwith is an Associate Professor in the Department of Geosciences at Florida Atlantic University (FAU).  He has been at FAU for 10 years, serving as Assistant Chair for two of those years, and prior to that received graduate degrees in geography from the University of Georgia and a bachelor’s degree in geography from the University of Mary Washington.  Scott has been a member of SEDAAG since 2002, and active presenter, discussant, and session chair at annual meetings, and has served on SEDAAG’s Tellers, Audit, and Program Committees.

 Dr. Kunwar Singh

I am a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Forestry and Environmental Resources at North Carolina State University in the Center for Geospatial Analytics. Prior to this, I worked as a postdoc fellow on a NSERC (Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada) funded project to map ecosites of the boreal forest system of Saskatchewan. I received my Bachelor of Science in Biology in 1999, and a Master of Technology degree in 2005 in ‘Satellite Remote Sensing and Geographic Information Science’ with an emphasis on forest and ecological applications. My passion for using geospatial technologies to study human-environment interactions brought me to North Carolina State University where I completed my doctoral degree in Forestry and Environmental Resources. My research focuses on causes and consequences of landscape heterogeneity at larger spatial scales. Currently, I am studying impacts of cropping pattern on the availability of seasonal surface water and remotely sensed land surface phenology climate indicators. March 2016, I was elected as a program director for the Landscape Specialty Group of the AAG for the year of 2016 to 2018, and I have served as an OSPA (Outstanding Student Poster Awards) coordinator for Biogeosciences Section of the American Geophysical Union for 2016.