UMass Geographers win 2023/4 World Geography Bowl!
On Friday, Feb. 23, 2024 our EGCS World Geography Bowl team, led by MS Geography student Helen Sajo, won the northeast regional World Geography Bowl. The team included MS Geography students James Rigney, Deni Ranguelova, and Greg Rosen, and BA Geography student Aadarsh Jeyasakthivel. Eve Vogel served as supporting faculty member during the event.
World Geography Bowl is a quiz-bowl style team competition between college teams of graduate and undergraduate students. There are both individual questions and whole-team collaborative questions. The annual regional competition, organized by NESTVAL (the New England-St. Lawrence Valley division of the AAG - American Association of Geographers), is usually held in conjunction with the annual NESTVAL conference in the Fall. In Fall 2023 the competition was postponed due to an active shooter situation in southern Maine, where it was to be held. Thus this February 2024 competition (held via Zoom) was technically the 2023 event.
Because the event was on Zoom, this year UMass students, staff, and faculty members were able to attend to cheer on our team.
This regional competition is followed by a national competition between teams from the nine regional divisions of the AAG. The five highest scoring individuals (from all teams) from the NESTVAL competition will have the opportunity to compete on the NESTVAL team at the national championships at the AAG Annual Meeting in mid-April in Honolulu, Hawaii.
Photo caption: Back row - team members Greg Rosen, Deni Ranguelova, Helen Sajo, James Rigney, and Aadarsh Jeyasakthivel. First row - audience members Sara Shedroff, Sam Bombard, and Patrick Heng.
The Geography Club is a UMass registered student organization in which students in the Five College Community who share an interest in geography can meet for field trips, talks, films, social events and other activities. All majors are welcome.
Our main goal each fall semester is to prepare a team to send to NESTVAL Geography Bowl.
Congratulations to the UMass Geobowl team who competed in the 2022 NESTVAL
Left to right: Kevin Bean, David Miller, Helen Sajo, Dan Finn, Shannon Fitzgerald.
Congratulations to the UMass Geobowl team who competed in the 2022 NESTVAL (New England-St. Lawrence Valley Division of the American Association of Geographers) World Geography Bowl at Salem State University! They placed second after a difficult tie-breaker round against UConn.
Also special congratulations to Dan Finn, David Miller, and Kevin Bean for being high scorers. They may attend AAG in March as part of the NESTVAL all-star team. Other members who participated were Shannon Fitzgerald and Helen Sajo, honorable mention scorers.