Faculty
Ralph
Lenz
Professor, environmental geogrpahy, urban geography, Southeast
Asia (spring semester sabbatical)
(937) 327-7305
Professor of Geography, teaches
urban and environmental courses including weather and climate and physical
geography, and several methods courses, and regional courses on Southeast
Asia and Africa. Recently he has studied spatial patterns in Southeast
Asia, and has published papers on disease patterns in Jakarta, tourism
in Vietnam, and the potential for ecotourism in the Togian Islands in
Sulawesi (check your map; they are rather remote). He has traveled extensively
in the third world, accompanying Fulbright-Hayes groups in India and
Kenya and in Zimbabwe and Malawi, and last summer visited China on
a Freeman Grant to develop a team- taught East Asian Studies course.
But Southeast Asia remains his place; during a winter sabbatical in
Indonesia, Laos, and Thailand he gathered data along with a geographer
friend on the impact of the events of 9-11-01 on the tourist industry,
and on another visit in July and August did preliminary work for a study
of the Thai-Cambodian border area. In his early career he worked on
quantitative measurements in point pattern analysis; among his publications
were two in Geographical Analysis. His Ph.D. is from Rutgers University.