Alan A. Lew, Ph.D., AICP

Biographical Note - written to introduce me to students in the classes I teach at NAU

I was born and raised in Sacramento, California to immigrant parents. My father was from China and my mother from Germany. They met in Canada after WWII and I was born a year later. I left Sacramento shortly after high school and a wasted year at Sac State. I spent a summer hitch-hiking across the Pacific Northwest and Mountain West, then 2.5 years in Hong Kong where I learned Cantonese. After about 7 years and 6 different schools (including the University of Hong Kong, San Francisco City College, and UC Berkeley-where I studied Mandarin), I finally finished my B.A. in geography at the University of Hawaii at Hilo (on the Big Island). It then took me only 5 years to complete two masters degress (one in geography and one in urban planning) and my Ph.D. in geography at the University of Oregon. I came to NAU after completing my Ph.D. in 1986. I have since taught as a visiting professor at the University of Tubingen (in Germany) and at the National University of Singapore.

In graduate school I came to focus my research on tourism, as subject which brought together my diverse interests in environmental perception, built environments, and travel. My interests have primarily been in Asia, especially Southeast Asia and China - both of which I have visited many times. I am hoping to spend my sabbatical leave in Fall 2000 at a university in Hong Kong studying the tourism situation in China. I have also done a fair amount of work on tourism in small towns in the Western US, and after coming to Flagstaff, I have been doing work on tourism on American Indian researvations. I have edited several books on tourism, including the first scholarly book to be published on tourism in China and the first one ever on tourism on Native American lands. I am also the editor-in-chief of a new international academic journal titled, Tourism Geographies.

Courses that I regularly teach at NAU include:

• GGR 346 - Geogaphy of the US
• GGR 576 - A graduate seminar in Tourism and Recreation Geography
• PL 376 - Planning for Sustainable Tourism (web-based)
• PL 431 - Computer Mapping for Planning (an AutoCAD class)
• PL 405 - Planning Studio (the capstone class for Public Planning majors)
• PL 406 - Planning Methods (spreadsheets and powerpoint presentations)
• UC 101 - University Colloquium (topic: sustainable communities)

See my Homepage for more information on these classes and my current activities.

See my online Curriculum Vitae for even more details