Deek is vice chairperson, of the computer information science department. By studying ancient and modern maps, students learn critical thinking and writing skills, as well as history, geography, and culture. The two universities, located across the street from each other in Newark, have a long history of sharing courses, degree programs, services, facilities, events and more. The course examines maps of many cultures, such as those of Australia's aborigines. The course evolved from Gronim's Ph.D. dissertation on the structure of the natural world in British colonial New York, which won the Dixon Ryan Fox Prize for 2000 from the New York State Historical Association, awarded to the best unpublished manuscript on the history of the State of New York.
Students pour over Western maps dating from medieval period to current times.
Gronim says, maps offer something remarkable about cultural patterns and ideas. On the Marshall Islands, they used to use grids of sticks to indicate water flow patterns. Later, students analyze and write a five-page paper based on a contemporary map of their own choosing. A New Jersey shore resort, a rock climbing map of New York's Shawngunk Mountains, Disney World, Madison Square Garden, the New York City subway, and a postcard map of Stuttgart, Germany, number among the maps students featured last semester. In our course evaluations, our students say that they now think about history in a completely different way.