JAN: Good day. My name is Jan de Waal from the Department of Geography and
Environmental Studies here at Stellenbosch University. Welcome to the university's
online Open Day, and our department's presentation on the academic offerings
that you will have available to you if you come and study with us in the future.
ANELE: Hi. My name is Anele Horn and I'm from the Centre for Regional and Urban Innovation
and Statistical Exploration within the Department of Geography,
and I'll be speaking to you specifically about the postgraduate offerings within the department.
JAN:
So, this presentation will cover a few things that stem from commonly asked questions at previous open days.
First, we will consider what is geography and environmental studies.
We'll then have a look at the degree programmes with geography offered as a major subject,
our specific module offerings, the entry requirements, and then, the most common question,
"What can I do if I study geography?”, our career possibilities.
We'll then consider our postgraduate opportunities in the department, which Anele will also expand on.
So, what is geography? Many of you will have taken geography at school as a school subject. However,
we have lots of students who take geography at university without having taken geography
at school, because they are interested in the environment, or in human systems,
or they're just interested in geography in general but they couldn't take it as a subject at school,
because of timetable clashes or something of that, something of that ilk. So, in academia, we view
geography as a discipline, which is concerned with studying the earth's natural environment,
human life, and the interrelationships between these over time and space.
And what's really interesting about geography is that we've got many, sub-disciplines, some of which will really interest you.
So we have tourism geography, urban geography, climatology,
meteorology, geomorphology, and environmental geography.
And all of these are available to you as a student here at Stellenbosch University.
One of the things that drew me to geography when I was studying was the potential to do fieldwork.
So here you can see some of our students doing fieldwork
We get outdoors a lot. I was not taken with the idea of spending my life doing a
nine-to-five office job and so I really enjoy getting out in the field as well.
What are the degree programmes that you could take geography and environmental studies as a subject?
If you're interested in registering for a BA degree. If you register for a BA Humanities,
BA Development and Environment, BA Sports Science, or BA Social Dynamics degree programme,
you will be able to take geography as a subject, and indeed,
major in geography and environmental studies in your degree programme. For those of you who are
wanting to register for a BSc programme, you could take the BSc Earth Sciences programme,
and take the geo-environmental science stream that will allow you to register for geography as well,
take geography as a subject. And the department also offers another degree programme called the
BSc Geoinformatics, but that will be covered in a separate presentation in the sciences faculty.
Alright, so if you take geography as a subject at Stellenbosch University, you'll find that you'll
take specific modules. At first year you'll take Geo 124. Geo 124 is a basic introduction
to geography and environmental studies where we consider human geography and physical geography.
You will then progress to second year geography, Geo 225 and Geo 265. Geo 225 is basic urban and
tourism geography, and Geo 265 is climatology and meteorology. If you then take geography at a third
year, you will take geography 314, and 323 in the first semester, 314 being tourism geography,
323 being urban geography. Geo 358 and 363 are second-semester subjects . 358 being environmental
geography and 363 being geographic information systems. If you were to take the BSc Earth Science
path, you would do Geo 124 in your first year, and then you would start to do what we call
Geographic Information Technology, or GIS, sort of applications and remote sensing at second year.
So you would take GIT 214 and 241, and then you would do Geo 265 climatology and meteorology,
and then at third year, you would do two more GIT subjects, as well as Geo 334, which is
geomorphology, and natural hazards and Geo 358, which is common to the BA degree programme.
So I often get asked what are the entry requirements for geography degrees. Well,
the entry requirements can be found within the different university yearbooks.
So if you look at the online for the official Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences yearbook,
you will find the specific entry requirements for your degree programme. Please note that
you do not need to have geography at a Matric level at school to take geography at university.
We have many students who don't take geography at school and continue with geography at university,
and they actually end up doing postgraduate degrees with us because they enjoy it so much.
For the BSc Earth Sciences degree programme, similarly, you can also find the entry requirements
in the Stellenbosch University yearbook, but here you'll have to look at the Faculty of Sciences yearbook.
Once again, you don't need geography at school to take geography at university.
What careers can one do with geography?
It needs to be noted that a degree in Geography and Environmental Studies is not your traditional
vocational training, but rather it involves the development of transferable skills that can be
used in the workplace. So these skills include things like problem-solving, report writing,
the ability to critique and summarise important information.
Nevertheless, there are a multitude of career opportunities available to our graduate students.
A quick little Facebook stalk of some of our past students has led to these career paths.
Some our past students have become researchers, there are lots of research institutions in South Africa,
some of them are as private researchers and then you also get things like agricultural,
the ARC, what's that? ANELE: Agricultural Research Council.
JAN: And the CSIR. We then have GIS technicians, we've got past students who become agricultural
land surveyors, we have past students become town planners, and then you get out-of-the-box social media managers.
Some of our past students have become environmental impact assessment
consultants, the environmental management officers within the Department of Environmental Affairs.
We've got some students who've become teachers, wetland scientists, disaster risk managers,
environmental site officers for construction firms, a past student became a drone flight
operator, solid waste management consultants, some of our past students have become academics,
project managers, and then we've got some students who go into the NGO sector.
So your career opportunities are really diverse and there are lots of opportunities for you.
So, you'll also find that once you finish your undergraduate studies, there are postgraduate
options within the department. You could continue your studies through an Honours degree.
So that would be a fourth year, and you can do a BA Honours or a BSc honours with us.
You could then continue studies through a Master's. Your MA or MSC and our doctoral programmes.
If you have any more questions, please contact our Development and Environment Coordinator,
Dr. Samantha Williams. Her email address is on the slide. And you can also look us up on
the Stellenbosch University website, or you can look us up on Facebook.
ANELE: So, even though it's a long way off for you now, I'm going to speak to you a little bit
more about the postgraduate offering within the department so that you can start planning ahead.
So within the department there's also another centre that offers a variety of postgraduate
courses and we are called the Centre for Regional and Urban Innovation and Statistical Exploration,
or in short, we refer to ourselves as CRUISE. Now, this centre was initially founded in 2009
as a collaborative effort between the University's Department of Geography and the statistics
authority in South Africa, called Statistics South Africa. And the main purpose of the centre is to
do research and undertake education and training in the fields of urban and regional systems.
So basically, the department offers or not the department, the centre offers four Master's
programmes and two doctoral programmes. So essentially what we have is that if you have
successfully completed your Honours degree in Geography within the department, you will be
able to gain entry into these Master's programmes. So, for people who would want to work essentially
as urban and regional planners, the Master's program in Urban and Regional Planning would
be more appropriate and that programme you can follow, either by doing it by means of coursework,
so where you come in a few times a year and you attend physical modules, or alternatively you'll
be able to do the Master's in Urban and Regional Planning by means of a dissertation or research
or a thesis whatever you know it by. But then for people who work in different disciplines who are
interested in just furthering their career, they might be more interested in doing the Master's
programme in Urban and Regional Science, which you can also do by means of coursework, which
is only a one year programme, or you can also do a Master's by dissertation in urban and regional
science if that is the way that you want to go. And then once you finalise your Master's then you
can also start enrolling for a doctoral programme which you can come speak to us at any time.
And then just to also allude to what Jan has mentioned earlier about the career opportunities
that you will have once you've finished studying in our department. The people who
undertake the Master's in Urban and Regional Planning will be able to work as professional
town planners at the end of the day, either in the public sector or the government sector,
or as a consultant in the private sector. And then also, there are many planners who do research
at the various research institutions in South Africa, such as the CSIR, the HSRC, or academia.
But then as I mentioned before, there are many people who work in different disciplines and
who would like to further their career by doing a Master's to understand the impact that urban
and regional systems and urban and regional planning has on their specific discipline,
and those people usually come from environmental backgrounds, geography,
public administration backgrounds, statistics, property development, and financial institutions backgrounds.
So many of those also decide to do a Master's at the end of the day.
So if you want additional information regarding our postgraduate programmes,
you're welcome to go have a look at our website as mentioned in the slide, or alternatively, you
can contact Ms. Yvette Regue who can tell you a little bit more about the structure of the courses
or the content of the specific course that you're interested in. She is our Administrative Officer.
JAN: Well thank you so much for joining us here, and we look forward to
seeing you in the future when you join us in our department.
ANELE: Thank you very much, hope to see you here.