New faculty member joins SIUE, geography
SIUE will expand the Geography Department in the fall of 2011. According to Wendy Shaw, associate dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of geography, Stacey Brown recently signed a contract to join the faculty at SIUE.
Stacey Brown joins SIUE geography department. photo courtesy of Brown.
Brown is originally from Healdton, OK., a small town in southern OK known for its oil reserves. She is currently at Oklahoma State University, completing her PhD. in geography.
“I am finishing my PhD in geography with a focus on health geography and doing research with a soil physicist on evapotranspiration,” said Brown.
Brown stated that she received her undergraduate degree in geography, geographical information systems, and economics. She went on to get her master’s in geography in Charlotte, N.C., focusing on location analysis and retail geography. Upon completion of her master’s degree, Brown moved to Chicago, IL, where she worked as in the market analyst department at Walgreen’s.
“I was able to travel around the United States looking for new locations for Walgreens,” said Brown. “Following a couple years of working as an analyst, I decided to go back to school from my PhD in geography at Oklahoma State.”
According to Brown’s university website, her research is focused on documenting the water balance for Oklahoma and converting maps into a digital atlas. Brown also works to understand health inequalities in Oklahoma City, OK.
“I want to understand why there are certain areas of the city that have worse health than others areas and could this be due to socioeconomic characteristics such as poverty or place effects such as too many fast food restaurants and not enough supermarkets,” said Brown.
Brown stated that she did not find SIUE as she was looking for places to teach. SIUE found her.
“I really enjoyed the faculty in the Department of Geography as well as everyone I met on my campus visit. The smaller student to faculty ratio appealed to me as well as the focus of the university on high-quality teaching,” said Brown. “Coming from a larger university, I enjoyed the idea of the smaller class sizes and the ability to teach multiple courses on a wide variety of topics.”
Filed Under: Geography
