Director, Center of Excellence for Geographic Education
University of South Carolina

March 22, 2006

JERRY T. MITCHELL, Ph.D.

Jerry T. Mitchell currently serves as the Director of the Center of Excellence for Geographic Education at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina. The center introduces the concepts and methodology of modern geography to K-12 classrooms by providing high-quality, low cost, professional development opportunities and materials for South Carolina educators. He is also a faculty research associate of the Hazards Research Lab, a research and graduate training lab focused on the use of geographic information science in environmental hazards analysis and management. His primary research areas lie in cultural responses to disaster, environmental justice, and the use of geospatial technologies for vulnerability assessments.

A graduate of Towson State University, Jerry earned his BS degree in History in 1991 and an MA in Geography and Environmental Planning in 1993. He received his PhD in Geography from the University of South Carolina in 1998, where he returned as a faculty member in 2004. From 1999 through 2004 he was an Associate Professor of Geography at Bloomsburg University in Pennsylvania.

Jerry has authored more than twenty peer-reviewed articles and book chapters in the field of hazards. His work has appeared in the journals Natural Hazards Review, Environmental Hazards, Social Science Quarterly, and the Annals of the Association of American Geographers. A new piece relating risk management and the tourism industry will soon appear in Tourism Management. He has recently returned from field work along the Mississippi Coast investigating the spatial dimensions of storm surge inundation from Hurricane Katrina as it relates to socially vulnerable populations.