Geography students regularly participate in the college honors program where they work closely with a faculty adviser, pursuing individual research and scholarship.

In addition, students often assist faculty members with professional research. One recent project was to develop a neighborhood profile for a community in St. Paul to be used as a base for developing a plan for future neighbor-hood development.

Numerous geography majors have attended and collaborated with faculty on presentations for professional conferences. Students in various seminars, those working as research interns for local community organizations, and those completing honors projects, present their work at the Midwestern Undergraduate Geography Symposium. In addition, students annually present their research at the AAG West Lakes Division Conference, and students have also presented at the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers.

Students have the opportunity to get into the field through course field trips. Students in the Regional Geography of North America and People and the Environment courses have taken trips to Lake Superior and the Iron Range to witness the resource-based economy of the boreal forest region, while class visits to southern Minnesota and different farming operations have illustrated the changing scale of agriculture in the United States . Field study within the Twin Cities metropolitan area is a part of Human Geography, Urban Geography, Cities of the 21st Century, Metro Analysis and Geographic Information Systems coursework.