Syracuse University senior geography students have launched a website that aims to expose a wider range of people to the topic.

Potential geography majors, whether they be current SU students or prospective students, will now be able to visit GeoCuse.com and learn about the major from an undergraduate geography major’s point of view.

As the capstone project for the GEO 491 senior seminar course, a required class for all geography majors, the 17 senior geography students worked throughout the semester to put together a website that was revealed at a launch party on Tuesday in Maxwell Auditorium at 7 p.m.

The launch of the new website is in connection with National Geography Awareness Week and the attendees were able to play geography related games and win prizes as the students showed what they have been working on the entire semester, said Emma Edwards, a senior geography and policy studies dual major.

The idea to build the website came from Anne Mosher, the professor of the course and mentor for the project. Mosher said students wanted to express what geography was so they went out and did a lot of research.

Students gathered information on the major, interviewed faculty and alumni and found geography based content. People can expect to find all of this information on the website.

“The website was designed to expose potential geography majors, whether current students or high school students, how amazing and interesting geography can be as a discipline,” said Andrew B. P. Barrows, a senior biology and geography major.

With the help from mentors and the SU Online Learning Services, the 17 senior geography major students built the website. The project required the students to learn the program Expressions, SU’s version of WordPress, and place their content on it. The most challenging part of the whole website was learning the coding and how to actually build a website, said Kerry Wolfe, a senior geography and magazine dual major and staff writer for The Daily Orange.

“It was something, I personally found very difficult,” she said.

SU Online Learning Services helped the students whenever they had question. Barrows said it was a huge asset during the project, since many students didn’t have past experience with the technology.

In addition to learning how to code a webpage, the geography students enjoyed the fact that they not only learned a lot of things about their major, but also about each other.

“We learned how to think about geography in a different way and appreciate the major more,” Edwards said. “We were all geography majors, but we all had different interests in geography so it was interesting to see different perspectives.”

The class broke down into work groups of geographical interests, each student taking part in two sections of the website, Mosher said. “The students had to work together outside of the classroom as they did research for their pages, so they really learned how to work together,” she added.

“We made long-lasting friends because of this project; it was like our final bonding experience,” Edwards said.

The students said they hope that the hard work they put into this website, will continue after their class is over.

“The university has a geography website, but this is one from an undergraduate’s perspective so we hope SU will recognize it and use it once it is in place,” Mosher said. “It is different from the typical university language website, so we think it will attract more students because it is information coming from a student.”

Published on November 19, 2014 at 12:01 am

Contact Ali: Ali Linan