The Forty-Sixth Meeting: Asheville, North Carolina

Southeastern Geographer Vol. XXXII, No. 1, May 1992, pp. 74-75 THE FORTY-SIXTH MEETING: ASHEVILLE, NORTH CAROLINA Vernon Meentemeyer The Forty-Sixth meeting of the Southeastern Division of the Association of American Geographers was held at the Radisson Asheville, 2426 November, 1991. The meeting was hosted by Appalachian State University and Western Carolina University; Neal Lineback and Jeffrey Neff served as co-hosts. The meeting was well attended with an official registration count of 438, including 199 regular members, 209 student registrations and 30 spouses. The 1991 program included three guided field trips, meetings of the Committee on the Status ofWomen in Geography and the Committee on Geography in Education, the Second World Geography Bowl and the Annual Business Meeting. Sunday evening activities included dinner and music at the Stone Soup Cafe followed by a video and panel discussion on North Carolina mountain environments. One special session, "Wetlands," was organized by David Shankman, University ofAlabama. Sixty-eight papers were submitted for the regular and student honors sessions and 65 papers were presented. This is a modest increase over the 61 papers presented at Columbia, SC in 1990 and equal to the number of papers presented by Division members at the joint SEDAAGELDAAG meeting held in Charleston, WV in 1989. The number ofhonors papers decreased, however, from 12 to 11. The papers were organized into 18 sessions by topical areas. As in 1990, no Southern Studies Plenary session was organized, although four papers with a southern theme were grouped. The Program Committee provided thorough and timely reviews of all papers submitted. In the spirit ofthe motion passed by the membership in 1990, special sessions for undergraduate paper presentations were also organized. Seven papers were presented in two sessions, titled "Gamma Theta Upsilon (GTU) Undergraduate Paper Sessions," organized and chaired by Howard Johnson, Jacksonville State University. These papers were not reviewed by the Program Committee and no prize for best paper was Dr. Meentemeyer is a Professor of Geography at the University of Georgia in Athens, GA 30602. He is Vice President and Program Chair of the Division. Vol. XXXII, No. 1 75 given; nevertheless, the quality ofthe papers was uniformly high. A call for GTU undergraduate papers will be included in the SEDAAG Newsletter . It is noteworthy that Russ Mather, President of the AAG, devoted his "President's Column" in the February, 1992, AAG Newsletter to the "World Geography Bowl," which was held again in 1991 as part of the SEDAAG annual meeting. He suggests that this activity could be expanded to the programs of other divisional meetings, and that a national championship could even be held at the annual AAG meeting. He also noted the abundance of young scholars in attendance at the SEDAAG meeting. The 1991 call for papers included a request that abstracts be submitted on diskette. Only about one third of the submissions included a diskette, but this was enough to attempt a complete retyping of the abstracts to avoid a mixture offormats and typestyles. The Steering Committee recommended that in the 1992 call for papers the membership be "strongly urged" to submit abstracts on diskette. (Let me also take this opportunity to remind the membership to volunteer to serve as session chairs and paper discussants and to follow guidelines for the submission of papers.) The annual business meeting was conducted by Charles F. Kovacik, President of the Division. He announced the election of Karl B. Raitz to the presidency. New State representatives include: Gerald Webster, Alabama ; Thomas Boswell, Florida; David Zurich, Kentucky; Allaire Shaw, South Carolina; and Mack Gillenwater, West Virginia. Janet Kodras, Jeff Neff, Ted Mealor and Jesse McKee were elected to the Honors Committee , with Julian Minghi to serve as chair. Clifton Pannell and Julie Elbert were elected to the Nominating Committee, with Donald Ziegler to serve as chair. The Forty-Sixth meeting concluded on Tuesday with the Honors luncheon. John Florin, Chair of the Honors Committee, announced that Jay Gao, University of Georgia, received the best student paper award. The Outstanding Service Award was presented to Neal Lineback for his years of unselfish service to SEDAAG. The recipient of the Merle C. Prunty Scholarship was Charles W. Lafon, Emory and Henry College...