Faculty Research
Dr. Kevin Czajkowski
Dr. C's research interests are diverse, and all revolve around geospatial technologies.
Dr. C uses GIS and remote sensing technologies to assess sources of non-point source pollution in the Maumee River Watershed and Lake Erie. Graduate students worked on the funded project to map agricultural practices from remote sensing including crop type, cover crop, tillage practice, etc.
Dr. C engages K-12 teachers and students through the NASA funded GLOBE Mission EARTH Project (GME). GME is a partnership between the University of Toledo, Boston University, Tennessee State University, NASA Langley Research Center and WestEd/UC Berkeley with other leveraging partners of Palmyra Cove Education Center, SUNY Fredonia, University of Northern Michigan, Defiance College and Earth Heart Farms. The goal is to have students do authentic science projects taking GLOBE observations and using NASA assets to present their projects at symposia at the University of Toledo, the GLOBE Midwest Student Research Symposium and GLOBE International Virtual Science Symposium.
Funding sources include NASA Science Activation, NOAA B-wet, Ohio EPA, ODHE, Lake Erie Commission.
Dr. C's Project Sample
Students at Earth Heart Farms learning about STEM careers.
DR. C'S PROJECT Links
DR. MINXUAN LAN
Dr. Lan’s current research interests include 1) spatial-temporal analysis and its applications to crime, public health, and human sustainability, 2) data mining, natural language processing (NLP), and their applications on social media big data, and 3) substance abuse epidemic and drug problem. He is the Director of the Spatial Social Science Research Lab at The University of Toledo.
Dr. Lan is broadly interested in the fields of GIS, spatial statistics, crime science, social science, public health, and big data mining. He is particularly intrigued by the possibility of using interdisciplinary theories and methods to solve real-world problems. He has published interdisciplinary research papers in peer-reviewed journals including Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Applied Geography, Cities, Computers, Environment and Urban Systems, International Journal of Geographical Information Science, Social Science Computer Review, etc.
Dr. Lan’s Project Links
- Bus stop relocation and street robbery
- Casino and city crime
- Geotagged tweets, ambient population, and thefts
- Intraday variation of the crime-tweets relationship
- “Broken Emotion” Conjecture
- Dr. Lan's Webpage
Dr. Patrick L. Lawrence
Dr. Lawrence’s current research interests include environmental planning with a focus on water resources, watershed planning, the Great Lakes, watershed planning, parks and protected areas, natural hazards, and the use of remote sensing and GIS technologies for land use planning, landscape studies, and community decision-making.
Dr. Lawrence has received research funding support from US EPA, USDA, the National Science Foundation, Ohio EPA, and the Stranahan Foundation. His current projects include restoration of the Ottawa River on the main campus of the University of Toledo, watershed planning in the Maumee Area of Concern, planning for parks and protected areas in the Great Lakes basin, and climate change education for GK12.
Dr. Lawrence also serves as the President of the Board of Director for Partners for Clean Streams Inc. and chair of the Maumee Remedial Action Plan Committee with community focus efforts at addressing issues with rivers and streams in NW Ohio.
Dr. Lawrence's Project Links
- Geospatial Tools for Urban Water Resources (Book Chapter 8)
- Ottawa River Restoration Project (Pre-project Fact Sheet)
- As The Water Flows: Community Based Decision-Making and Participatory Planning for
the Maumee Area of Concern (Book Chapter 13)
- Poster-Climate Change Education Initiatives at UT
- Great Lakes Areas of Concern Center
- MA Education Degree Program
- *Dr. Lawrence's Webpage
Dr. David J. Nemeth
Dr. Nemeth's current (Fall 2014) research and writing, now in various stages of completion, are:
1) Dr. Nemeth recently published a book chapter titled “Blissful Devolution: Our Rolling
Judgment Day” In James Norwine, ed., A World After Climate Change and Culture-shift.
Amsterdam: Springer, 2014, pp. 327-350. In this chapter he is writing as a futurist
and describing the condition of humankind in the A.D. 2110. His projection assumes
that the two major drivers at present effecting change for the next hundred years
are a) anthropogenic climate change and b) rapid shifts in cultural values. In a nutshell,
the future in a totalitarian utopia.
2) Dr. Nemeth recently published a co-authored article for Applied Geography (December, 2013:109-118) titled “Alternative Tourism Geographies: Leveraging the
Ironic Case of Pennsylvania’s Route 666 for Economic Development.” In this article
searching for The Beast is proposed as an alternative tourism strategy designed to
revitalize economically-distressed appropriate rural regions. His co-author is Dr.
Deborah Che, at Southern Cross University in Australia.
3) Dr. Nemeth has recently published a co-authored book chapter project in press:
“Sweetwater, Mountain Springs, and Great Lakes: A Hydro-geography of Beer Brands.” In Mark Patterson and Nancy Hoalst-Pullen, eds., The Geography of Beer: Regions, Environment, and Societies. New York: Springer, 2014: pp. 89-98. The chapter explores the marketing of commercial
beers in the American Beer Belt and the significance of the “purity” of the water
ingredient in popular local, regional and national brews, now and in the past. His
co-authors are Dr. Jay Gatrell and Dr. Charles Yeager, both at Indiana State University.
4) Dr. Nemeth has just completed a book-length memorate comprised of 52 chapters describing
his Peace Corps Volunteer service on Jeju (Cheju) Island in South Korea during 1973-1974.
The title is Jeju Island Rambling: Self-exile in Peace Corps, 1973-1974. Toledo, OH: Open Wide Press (self-published).
5) Dr. Nemeth is continuing to write a monograph-length manuscript tentatively titled
“Dr. Irving Brown in the Land of the Ouled Nail.” This is his elaboration on an unpublished travel-adventure by Irving Henry Brown
(1888-1940). His elaboration discusses at length the hypothesis that proto-Romany
migrations into the Iberian Peninsula across North Africa occurred prior to and independent
of the historic fifteenth-century migrations of Romanies into the Peninsula from the
north.
6) Dr. Nemeth is continuing work on another book project tentatively titled Road to Poona. The style and content represent his continuing interests in cultural geography as
“magical realism.” He is writing the book as “Stevie,” a postmodern amalgam of Voltaire’s
Candide and Schrodinger’s Cat. His explorations and adventures include a brief sojourn
in Poona, India. He has already designed the book’s dust jacket:
Dr. Neil Reid
Dr. Neil Reid is a regional scientist and industrial geographer.
He has a number of current research projects including the role of social networks
in the development of industrial clusters, the role and place of shrinking cities
in the new urban world, the success of university spin-off programs, and the geography
of microbreweries and brewpubs.
Photo: Dr. Reid visiting the Great Wall of China in 2007
Dr. Reid's Project Links
- Sustainability in the New Urban World: Lessons from Shrinking Cities
- Social network analysis: A tool for better understanding and managing your cluster
- *Dr. Reid's Webpage
Dr. Beth Schlemper
Dr. Schlemper’s research falls into two broad areas: cultural/historical geography and geography education. Exploring a region known as Wisconsin’s Holyand as a case study, she identified the patterns of chain migration that contributed to the emergence of this cultural region in the mid-nineteenth century by engaging in extensive archival research and fieldwork in both the United States and Germany. Based on this research, Schlemper developed a conceptual model related to the construction and maintenance of regional identity and borders that can be applied by researchers to other regions.
Another major area of research for Dr. Schlemper is geography education, including higher education and grades 7-12. These efforts have been collaborative and funded by the National Science Foundation. She is also working in the area of the scholarship of teaching and learning in Human Geography at the undergraduate level.
She has published articles in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, The Professional Geographer, the Journal of Geography, the Journal of Geography in Higher Education, Research in Higher Education, the Journal of Cultural Geography, the Journal of Historical Geography, Theory & Research in Social Education, and Urban Education. In addition, she has published a number of chapters in edited volumes, such as in the books Aspiring Academics: A Resource Guide for Graduate Students and Early Career Faculty, Spatial Citizenship Education: Citizenship Through Geography, and Wisconsin Germans Land and Life.