Linking periods and places, both ancient and modern, through maps and evidence examination is one way to help the students develop information organization, critical analysis, and evaluation skills, all essential to problem solving and programming. They must also put the maps in a historical context and think critically about what each map contains as well as what it doesn't contain. The two universities 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York, which won the Dixon Ryan Fox Prize for 2000 from the New York State Historical Association, awarded to the best unpublished manuscript on the history of the State of New York.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 said maps offer something remarkable about cultural patterns and ideas. The Aborigines drew animals to tell stories about the landscape on maps. 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.