Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina

UFSC Geography Program offers two types of degrees: an undergraduate degree that prepares for recognition activities, surveys, geo-economic and physico-geographical studies, and other tasks in the general and specific fields of Geography, and an undergraduate teaching degree that prepares students for a career in primary and secondary school teaching. The program belongs to the Department of Geosciences at the School of Human Sciences and Philosophy. It is linked to five specific areas of this department: physical geography, human geography, cartography, geology and oceanography.

Throughout the program, besides the classroom courses, students engage in activities in various laboratories (http://www.portalcfh.ufsc.br/laboratorios/) and in the planetarium, as well as in field work and technical visits. Besides, they can improve their knowledge with a scholarship or working as a volunteer in research and outreach projects, becoming a student tutor in a curriculum course, doing an internship, pursuing part of their studies at another Federal Higher Education Institution through academic mobility, and going on an exchange program in one of UFSC’s partner institutions abroad.

The program organizes annually the SEMAGEO, the Geography Week, an outreach activity which allows students, professors and professionals to participate in lectures, debates and workshops for academic and professional advancement.

From the forth semester, students start taking specific courses according to the focus of their degree. If they opt for the teaching degree, by the end of the program, students do a supervised teaching practicum in a public school. Otherwise, students write a final thesis or a report on a supervised internship in the field.

The Geography graduate needs to have the following skills: ability to read and interpret various documents (landscapes, photographs, aerial and satellite images, maps, graphs, charts, texts, etc.); analytical and synthetic thinking; scientific mindset; public spirit; taste and willingness to do fieldwork; and a critical and analytical view for issues related to the production, organization and planning of the space and the social life (economic, political and cultural issues), as well as to the natural processes and their relationship with the social environment (environmental issues).

The laws that regulate the profession in Brazil are Law no. 6664/79 and Law no. 7399/85.