The Department of Geography and Environmental Studies is one of the oldest departments in Rajshahi University. The Department started functioning with few students and teachers in 1955. The first batch of students in the two-year postgraduate course was admitted in 1955. Subsequently three years honours course was introduced in 1962. Since its establishment, the department has grown almost continuously. The pace of growth has increased after the liberation of Bangladesh in 1971. At present the teaching staff of this department consists of 23 teachers, of which 10 are professors. Total number of students now in the department is around 400. With several changes in academic set up and curriculum the department is now placed under the newly created Faculty of Life and Earth Science. Integrated Honours course is running since 1991-92 sessions and to meet the challenge of time four years Honours course was introduced in 1997-98 sessions. The courses for the undergraduate classes are designed to maintain a balance between the physical and the human branches of geography; the postgraduate courses, on the other hand, are designed to give the students specialized knowledge in different aspects of the subjects.
The department is well equipped in respect of technical equipments and staffs. Besides meeting the needs of the general students regarding library facilities, practical and fieldwork, the department has an adequate facility for advanced research work. There is a good stock of maps, drawing and drafting equipments and cartographic apparatus. The laboratories of the department were not developed at the beginning but remarkable progress has been made in this regard during the last two decade. Now the department has physical, drawing, and topographic and GIS laboratories. The establishment of an environmental laboratory could not be possible due to paucity of fund although few instruments and kits are there for environmental analysis. The department has a computerized weather monitor and a weather station has been designed. The department has also a well-equipped GIS laboratory.

The teachers of this department are actively engaged in research activities in different areas of the discipline including GIS and Remote Sensing. A good number of teachers have also received training in GIS and Remote Sensing from abroad. Senior teachers of the department are supervising a good number of M.Phil and Ph.D. fellows of the department and various Institutes of the University. The department organized seminar, conference and workshop at regular basis. The department has its own annual Journal named "The Journal of Geo-Environment", ISSN 1682-1998. Students of this department take active part in sports, athletics and other co-curricular activities. All the members of the department are working hard to meet the challenge of higher education in the country in the new millennium.

 

 

Department's some of the facilities are:

 

Geographic Information System (GIS) and Remote Sensing Laboratory includes sufficient number of high speed PCs with some wide screen monitors, wide base digitizer and color inkjet plotter, sufficient number of conventional printers and multimedia projector. All the computers and peripherals in the department are networked, which is connected to the fiber optics based campus LAN. The LAN is connected to the university's own 24-hour online internet service.

 

Survey laboratory includes plane table survey equipment, prismatic compass survey equipment, chains and taps, theodolite, Dumpy level and global positioning systems (GPS).

 

Physical Geography Laboratory includes different landform models, rocks and minerals' testing equipment, particle measuring devices, arsenic contamination testing tools, pollution measuring kits and pH meter.

 

Climatology Laboratory includes automatic weather monitoring devices. Construction of a full flagged meteorological station within this department is under process.

 

Cartography laboratory includes large scale topographical maps of two periods of entire Bangladesh, different types of weather maps and satellite image hardcopies of 1978-1979 for the entire country. This laboratory also includes different types of maps and atlases.

 

 

Geoinformatics Research Unit has satellite raw digital data of different platforms for the entire country of different time phases. The unit also has a good archive of vector digital data of different administrative level and features of Bangladesh..

 
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