![\"Members](\"http:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/08\/geography-students.jpg\")
<\/a>Members of the East Lakes Division team that won this year\u2019s World Geography Bowl are, from left, Steve Schultze from Michigan State University, Alex Colucci from Kent University, Lisa Dershowitz from Miami University, and UT students David Eichenauer, Michael Chohaney and Evgeny Panchenko.<\/p><\/div>The World Geography Bowl is a competition hosted by the Association of American Geographers at its annual meeting, which was held in Tampa this year. Teams of students from nine different regional divisions from across the United States compete in a quiz competition similar to \u201cJeopardy!\u201d to test their knowledge of geography.<\/p>\n
The East Lakes Division won the competition this year, with students from colleges in Ohio and Michigan. Three of these students were from UT, and one of them \u2014 Evgeny Panchenko \u2014 placed in the top five for individual performance during the competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was kind of neat to have three members of our university selected for the regional team; we\u2019ve never had that many,\u201d said Dr. Patrick Lawrence, UT professor and chair of geography and planning. \u201cAnd then to have them go win and have one of our students finish in the top five of all students was fantastic.\u201d<\/p>\n
Each region selects team members based on an internal competition; the East Lakes division uses an online quiz to choose the most qualified students for its team. From UT, the team included Panchenko, a master\u2019s graduate student in geography and Fulbright scholar from Russia; David Eichenauer, an undergraduate student in geography; and Michael Chohany, a PhD student going into his third year in the Spatially Integrated Social Science Program. <\/p>\n
The team also included Steve Schultze from Michigan State University, Alex Colucci from Kent University and Lisa Dershowitz from Miami University.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was nervous because we were up against kids from more esteemed schools,\u201d Chohany said. \u201cBut we were a good team, and we balanced each other very well.\u201d<\/p>\n
During the competition, students are asked a variety of questions on political boundaries, land formations, climate, weather, historical aspects of geography and more.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese students need to have a pretty broad understanding of geography,\u201d Lawrence said. \u201cWhen you put a team together of six people, you hope some students have different strengths in what they\u2019re studying.\u201d<\/p>\n
This was the first time the East Lakes Division, which is one of the smaller regions in the national Association of American Geographers organization, won the competition.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe felt like just a ragtag bunch of kids, but we beat teams that probably trained much harder than we did,\u201d Chohany said.<\/p>\n
Aside from bragging rights, the team members received educational materials, including books and mapping software. Panchenko received a plaque for placing in the top five, as well as a high-quality atlas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Three UT students helped the East Lakes Division team win this year’s World Geography Bowl.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":538,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,7,37],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30856"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/538"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30856"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30856\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30856"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30856"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/news.utoledo.edu\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30856"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}