Two geography students find there’s more to it than longitudes and latitudes

Thursday, December 10, 2009

PSU's NESTVAL Championship Team, left to right: Kyle McGonagle, Merrimack; Marie Callahan, Hollis; Heidi Van Curen, Derry; Courtney Webb, Middlebury, VT.; and Jesse Robillard, Sanbornton.

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Kyle McGonagle and Marie-Louise Callahan might not know the capital of Paraguay, or the latitude/ longitude of their hometowns.

But if you want to know the name of the cattle-raising pastoralists in Kenya and Tanzania, they’re your go-to guys. (It’s the Massai, if you’re keeping score.)

“I definitely get a lot of people asking, ‘What do I really study in geography?’ ” said McGonagle, who hails from Merrimack.

“People always think you’re going to know every capitol of every country in the world,” agreed Callahan, who’s from Hollis. “But it’s really more. It’s an encompassing thing. You can take it and go into a lot of fields.”

McGonagle and Callahan admit spending a fair amount of time defending and explaining being geography majors at Plymouth State University. They are, after all, just two of about seven.

But knowing a lot about volcano structure, land formations and tectonic plates does have its perks. In their case, McGonagle and Callahan recently led Plymouth’s geography team to victory in a highly regarded regional quiz bowl, which earned them spots on a team that will compete nationally in Washington D.C., next spring.

The two were part of Plymouth State’s five-member team at the New England-St. Lawrence Valley Geographical Society World Geography Bowl, described as the country’s oldest regional academic geography organization.

“I’m really excited out it,” Callahan said. “We didn’t really expect to win, and then we did, that was a nice bonus.” Her lowered expectations were not an assessment of the team’s talent. Rather, they took a wrong turn on the way to the bowl, held at Salem State in Massachusetts, and were very late. Apparently, no Massachusetts geography was no one’s strong suit.

At the competition, Plymouth faced off against Salem State, Bridgewater State, Central Connecticut State and Keene State. Teams battled head to head in a series of rounds, answering individual and team questions about physical, human and political geography – everything from specific cultures to remote mountain ranges. The teams with the highest point totals advanced.

In the end, Plymouth routed Central Connecticut in the final round, 125-60. McGonagle said his interest in geography sprouted “by chance.”

He entered Plymouth State undeclared. One day, while leafing through course catalog, looking for a major, geography caught his eye. It probably shouldn’t have been too much of a surprise, as he scored well on spatial awareness tests as a youngster.

He was drawn to the study of physical geography, which covers stuff like land forms, climate and hydrology. But he’s especially interested in glaciers and how they move.

McGonagle, 22, calls himself “a trivia nerd.”

In fact, his favorite way to describe geography is “a major in trivia.”

“It’s not the best way to describe it, but I learn a lot of stuff that I probably will never use that much, but it’s still cool to know,” he said.

Callahan, 25, read her grandfather’s National Geographic magazines when she was young, and liked watching television shows about literature and travel.

Then she started taking geography classes in college and was hooked.

Both McGonagle and Callahan hope to land in graduate school someday. But first, he’s interested in working with geographic information systems (GIS), and she’s contemplating a dream career as a geography professor.

If all else fails, they could perhaps make their life’s earnings on Jeopardy.

Karen Lovett can be reached at 594-6402 or klovett@ nashuatelegraph.com.