The mission of the Department of Geography and GIS at DePaul University is to provide students with a high quality geographic education in which teaching and research excellence are paramount. The department equips students with sophisticated conceptual and technical skills for professions that draw upon geographical knowledge, spatial analysis, and advanced work in the social sciences, as well as makes available to the university the discipline's cutting-edge methodological and technical resources. We pursue our mission with a faculty that is committed to the “teacher-scholar" model, and through a curriculum that is theoretically robust, technologically innovative, and global in its orientation and scope, albeit with a distinctively urban emphasis. The department's mission is grounded in the confidence that a geographic education ensures a comprehensive liberal arts experience where students acquire knowledge, analyze information, and cultivate critical thinking. In a world that is becoming increasingly complex and interdependent, geographical literacy provides the basis for understanding the relationships between and among people and the environment, for understanding why events take place where they take place, and for pursuing a world that is more socially, economically, and environmentally just. Such understanding serves students as they pursue challenging careers and become socially engaged global citizens.