Online Bachelor of Arts Geography Major, Global Studies

A Geography Major in Global Studies equips students to understand and solve some of the world's most urgent social and environmental problems. Geographic technologies provide important tools for social science inquiry. These include computer-based geographic information sciences (GIS), remote sensing, and online, interactive mapping.

Career Opportunities

People with geography majors in global studies often develop careers in fields like high-tech, real estate, public health, environmental management, education, disaster response, city and regional planning, community development, and many others.

Lower Division (recommended but not required, 3 credits)

GEA 2000 World Regional Geography

Required Upper Division Core Courses (21 credit hours)

Introduction to Major (3 credit hours)

IDS 3315 Gaining Global Perspectives

Core Courses (9 credit hours)

ANT 3212 World Ethnographies

GEO 3001 Geography of Global Change

SYP 3456 Societies in the World

Theory (3 credit hours)

One of the following

GEO 3421 Cultural Geography

GEO 3471 Political Geography

GEO 3502 Economic Geography

Methods (6 credit hours)

SYA 3300 Research Methods

GIS 3048 Applications of Geographic Information Systems

Upper-Division Department Electives (9 credit hours)

Two additional upper-division geography (GEA/GEO) courses (6 credit hours)

One additional upper-division anthropology (ANT) course; or one additional upper-division sociology (SYA/SYD/SYG/SYO/SYP) course (3 credit hours)

To ensure every student’s success, we have certain admissions requirements for each of our programs. To help you through the application process, our enrollment advisors are here to answer your questions and guide you every step of the way.


FIU Admission Requirements

Applications are accepted for Spring, Fall and Summer terms.

Steps to Apply

First Year Students

Please submit the following:

• Online application
• $30 application fee.
• Official SAT, ACT and/or CLT scores.
• Official high school transcripts.

Transfer Students

Please submit the following:

• Online application
• $30 application fee.
• Official college transcripts.
• If you have less than 60 transferable college credits, you must also submit official high school transcripts and SAT, ACT and/or CLT scores in addition to any transcripts from postsecondary schools to the Office of Undergraduate Admissions.

Returning Students

Returning students must meet the current university and degree-specific requirements to be admitted. FIU has policies for students who left FIU, please click here for more details.

   Please submit the following:

• Online application
• $30 application fee
• Updated official transcripts

International Students

In addition to the above requirements, international applicants should submit:

• Official English Language Proficiency exam scores (TOEFL or IELTS).
• Official translations of any transcripts, if not in English.
• If you have less than 60 transferrable college credits, you must also submit official high school transcripts with translation.

University Requirements

• Lower division university core requirements or (for transfer students) general education requirements

• A minimum of 120 credits hours

• The final 30 credits must be taken at FIU (with exceptions requiring the approval of the Dean’s office)

• GPA 2.0 or higher

Steven J. Green School of International & Public Affairs

• A minimum of 48 credit hours of upper division courses

• A grade of “ C ” or higher in each major course

• *Foreign language: equivalent of a second semester sequence foreign language course or one more advanced (with a minimum grade of C).

We’re thrilled that you’re considering online education and want you to know exactly what to expect for tuition and fees. Education is an investment in your future. Use the following student tuition and fees calculator to determine your costs.

Dr. Young Rae Choi, Assistant Professor of Geography

She is a human-environmental geographer with interests in the field of marine and coastal governance and in East Asian studies. Using political ecology and critical political economy, her research investigates the complexity and connectivity of development-conservation relations with a focus on large-scale coastal development in East Asia. Her current projects include the modern history of coastal land reclamation in South Korea, sustainability controversies around eco-cities built on reclaimed land, and the neoliberal fisheries and fishing communities proliferating in the era of green growth. She teaches undergraduate courses in World Regional Geography, Geography of East Asia, and Marine Geography.

Dr. Ricardo Gonzalez, Associate Teaching Professor Geography

He serves as the Faculty Advisor for Undergraduate Programs in the Department of Global and Sociocultural Studies, and any student interested in the Geography major (or any of the other Global Studies majors) should seek him out to help them get started. His research is in the field of Coastal/Marine Geography, with a particular focus on fishing technologies in South America. He teaches undergraduate courses in Cultural Geography, Geography of Latin America and the Caribbean, and Geography of Europe.

Dr. Roderick Neumann, Professor of Geography

His research is centrally concerned with the study of culture and nature in Western thought. His work draws from a wide range of critical social theory, including the Marxist, feminist, critical race, and post-colonialist literatures, as well as from the ecological sciences. His methods are predominantly ethnographic and historical. He has conducted fieldwork primarily at rural sites in and around protected areas, particularly national parks and forests, in Tanzania, Western Europe, and California.  His latest research agenda incorporates insights from science and technology studies and the so-called nonhuman turn in the humanities and social sciences, with the goal of engaging nonhuman perspectives for a fresh conceptualization of human-wildlife interactions in protected areas. His undergraduate courses include Cultural Geography and the Geography of Global Change.

Dr. Ulrich Oslender, Associate Professor of Geography

His research interests lie in the fields of political and cultural geography, including: (i) critical geopolitics; (ii) spaces of resistance and the geographies of social movements (with emphasis on Latin America, particularly Colombia); (iii) geopolitical discourses on development, displacement, terror, and the connections between them; (iv) political ecology (in particular in tropical rainforest environments); and (v) the cultural politics of blackness in Latin America (with emphasis on the Afro-Colombian experience). He has conducted extensive fieldwork in Colombia, including long spells of participant observation among black communities in the Pacific coast region. He teaches undergraduate courses in World Regional Geography, Political Geography, and Critical Geopolitics.

Dr. Benjamin Smith, Associate Professor of Geography

He has long been fascinated by how we organize our landscapes and why our world looks the way it does. He is particularly interested in how places define themselves through their landscapes, and why some places (and the people who live in them) are more successful in doing so than others. His research seeks answers to these fundamentally geographic questions.. Most of his research is on how landscape mattered in shaping the cultural economy of Arab Gulf Cities, particularly Dubai. His  undergraduate teaching includes World Regional Geography, Geography of the Middle East, Geography of Global Change, and Urban Geography.