During the COVID-19 shutdown, GIS Outreach Coordinator, Michael Camponovo, has been making the best of the learn-from-a-distance situation by organizing a new weekly series of invited-speakers. In these “Zoom-side Chats” students (plus faculty and staff) get to hear about the experience of professional geographers working in a variety of fields and ask questions in an informal setting. Mike’s description:

The Geography Department at UTK encourages all of our students to attend and present at academic and professional conferences in their areas of interest. One benefit of attending these conferences is that students are able to meet professionals and ask questions about that person’s career path from being a student to a professional, their academic background, and what types of projects they work on. Unfortunately, due to the Coronavirus, all of these in-person events have been cancelled and none of our students had the opportunity to meet any professional geographers. So we decided to bring the professionals to our students using Zoom to host virtual question and answer sessions.

Big thanks to the speakers below for what have been some really enlightening discussions: