The mission of the Geography MA program delivered by the Department of Geography and Environmental Studies at California State University East Bay, is to further deepen and broaden the knowledge and research capabilities of Geography graduates so as to prepare them for a more advanced role in the workforce or for doctoral studies at a major research institution.

Graduates are brought to clearly understand the historical and philosophical origins and underpinnings of modern geographical thought and the important ways that geographic studies and tools are applied in the fields of research and public life. Through seminar discussions and mentored research, graduates deepen their knowledge of contemporary thinking with respect to a broad range of sub-disciplines from across the geographic spectrum. Through either detailed original project work or individual thesis preparation, graduates develop a substantial level of expertise concerning a particular geographic problem, process, and/or region. Graduates are independently able to formulate and rapidly conduct thorough and insightful research using a suite of literary tools from old-fashioned journal reviews to modern on-line searchable databases. They are able to make confident oral presentations on a range of different topics and perform the necessary research, analysis and information processing required in developing them.