Lawrence Grossman of Blacksburg, Va., head of the Department of Geography in Virginia Techas College of Natural Resources, received the 2004 Robert McC. Netting Award from the Cultural and Political Ecology Specialty Group of the Association of American Geographers in recognition of distinguished research and professional activities that bridge geography and anthropology.

The Netting Award is designed to recognize scholars who have distinguished themselves through involvement with interdisciplinary geographical and anthropological projects, who have published extensively in both anthropological and geographical journals, whose work is read and appreciated by practitioners in both fields, or whose service to both disciplines is meritorious.

Previous award winners were from leading doctoral programs in geography and anthropology in the United States and Australia. Grossman was the first person to win the award from a masteras program.

The Virginia Tech geography department soon will be participating in an interdisciplinary doctoral program being developed within the College of Natural Resources.

A member of the Virginia Tech faculty since 1979, Grossman teaches courses focusing on introductory geography, global environmental problems, world hunger, and economic development. His research explores a variety of topics related to economic development in developing countries: the impacts of cash cropping on the environment, economic differentiation, and food production; the relation between household income and dietary quality; peasant agriculture and contract farming; problems of pesticide use at the village level; gender and agriculture; and environmental history.

Grossman has published numerous journal articles and two books: Peasants, Subsistence Ecology, and Development in the Highlands of Papua New Guinea (Princeton University Press, 1984) and The Political Ecology of Bananas: Contract Farming, Peasants, and Agrarian Change in the Eastern Caribbean, for which he received a "CHOICE Award for Outstanding Academic Book" (University of North Carolina Press, 1998).

He received an M.A in anthropology from the University of Minnesota and a Ph.D. in geography from the Australian National University.

The College of Natural Resources at Virginia Tech consistently ranks among the top five programs of its kind in the nation. Faculty members stress both the technical and human elements of natural resources and instill in students a sense of stewardship and land-use ethics. Areas of studies include environmental resource management, fisheries and wildlife sciences, forestry, geospatial and environmental analysis, natural resource recreation, urban forestry, wood science and forest products, geography, and international development.

Founded in 1872 as a land-grant college, Virginia Tech has grown to become the largest university in the Commonwealth of Virginia. Today, Virginia Techas eight colleges are dedicated to putting knowledge to work through teaching, research, and outreach activities and to fulfilling its vision to be among the top 30 research universities in the nation. At its 2,600-acre main campus located in Blacksburg and other campus centers in Northern Virginia, Southwest Virginia, Hampton Roads, Richmond, and Roanoke, Virginia Tech enrolls more than 28,000 full- and part-time undergraduate and graduate students from all 50 states and more than 100 countries in 180 academic degree programs.

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