EAES Geography Students win Middle States AAG Geography Bowl
For the first time in 18 years of attendance at the Middle States Division/Association of America Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting, Montclair State University students captured the championship at the Geography Bowl.
Posted in: Uncategorized
The MSU team, consisting of Geography BA majors Mike Calvelli, Jeff Baker, Justin Lynch, Alex Caputi, Jason Darley, Rachel Maynard, and Lewis Windle competed with teams representing SUNY Geneseo, West Chester University, Shippensburg University, Penn State, Buffalo State University, Kutztown University, and York College. Montclair State’s team was at a disadvantage in that they had no graduate student members, compared to other teams. In the round robin tournament, Montclair State dominated their group with a tournament high 180 points. They qualified for the final playoff against a combined team of Shippensburg/Penn State, dominated by graduate students. In a close round, our team pulled ahead at the final set of questions to pull off the tournament win!
The Geography Bowl consists of two rounds of questions per match. Twelve individual questions can be answered by any student, 6 per team, using an answer buzzer (similar to a game show). There are 12 questions in an individual round. This is followed by the team question round, in which each team takes a shot at answering a multiple-answer questions, conferring with team members to arrive at the answers. Questions in this tournament were unusually difficult, no more than half were successfully answered in a typical round, and most faculty spectators were stumped by several questions per round. Questions cover all realms of geography:
- Urban
- Economic
- Political
- Cultural
- Geology
- Climatology
- Oceanography
- Biogeography
- Geotechnical Topics, such as GIS and Cartography
Michael Calveli was the highest scoring individual for the tournament. As high scorer, he answered more questions than any other student in the tournament (40+ participants, including many graduate students). A team of 6 high scorers will be invited to make up the Middle States Division all-star team at the World Geography Bowl at the AAG Annual Meeting in Chicago this April. The division will offer a modest voucher to students to help with travel expenses to the meeting.
Congratulations to all team members and their faculty advisors!