Biographical Text
Professor Emeritus of Geography and Planning Ole Gade received his B.A. degree in economics, with minors in Asian studies, German, geography, and history, from Florida State University in 1962. His M.S. degree in geography, also from Florida State, was awarded in 1964. In 1972, Gade received his Ph.D. degree in geography, with a minor in anthropology, from Michigan State University. In 1961, Gade married a hometown girl, Ane, from Aalborg, Denmark, in Tallahassee, Florida, while he was working on his undergraduate degree. Ane was later employed at Appalachian State University as the study-abroad coordinator for the international studies program. The Gades have two children. A daughter, Karen, born in 1965, was a chancellor's scholar at Appalachian State University and received her M.D. degree from Duke University. She is now in private practice in Cleveland. A son, Bo, born in 1972, is presently a truck driver. Bo is married to Laura Oliver, an Appalachian State University graduate with a mathematics degree. Bo and his wife live in Jacksonville, Florida. Gade began his career at Appalachian State University in 1970 as an assistant-associate professor in the Department of Geography and Geology. He was hired to develop a new major program in community and regional planning. Following this program's implementation with the 1974 catalog, for the next twenty years he taught a variety of courses in his discipline of geography, with additional contributions to the university honors program and Watauga College. Gade developed, and taught for the first time, twelve departmental courses which subsequently found their way into the curriculum, including undergraduate courses in regional geography, in quantitative methods, and in microcomputers in geography and planning, as well as graduate course work in theory and methods and in regional analysis. He designed and led five study-abroad tours for students of Appalachian State University and has been an invited lecturer and visiting professor to universities in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Russia, Poland, Ireland and China. Included among the universities are the University of Oslo; the Institute of Geography at the University of Stockholm; the Norwegian University of Science and Technology; Petrozavodsk State University, Russia; and the Institute of Geography, East China Normal University, Shanghai, People's Republic of China. During Dr. Gade's tenure at Appalachian State University, he directed the planning program from 1970 until 1975, chaired the Department of Geography from 1983 to 1987, and directed the Master of Social Science in Education Program from 1987 until 1999. Most recently he served as the developer and coordinator of the undergraduate honors program of the Department of Geography and Planning. Gade has chaired the Community-Campus Relations and the Artists and Lecture Series for the university and has served on a number of other committees, including the Academic Policy and Procedures Committee, the Curriculum Council, the University Honors Council, and the Foreign Studies Council. On behalf of Appalachian State University, Gade signed student exchange agreements with Petrozavodsk State University, and Shanghai Normal University. Gade's off-campus service included being vice chair of Watauga County Planning Board and being a member of the Boone Tourism Committee. Professionally, Gade served the Association of American Geographers in a number of capacities, notably as the co-founder, newsletter editor, and subsequent chair of the association's population specialty group. During his tenure at Appalachian State, Dr. Gade authored or co-authored thirteen books and monographs (six volumes are currently listed by the United States Library of Congress); he also authored or co-authored seventeen professional articles or book chapters. Two volumes of his edited works were the result of his directorship of the international conference of Planning Frontiers in Rural America, convened, in 1976, at the Center for Continuing Education. He also founded and edited the North Carolina Geographer, 1990-1997 and is the senior author/editor of the recently published 625 page, illustrated 2nd edition of North Carolina: People and Environments, with Art Rex, Jim Young, and Baker Perry, Boone, North Carolina: Parkway Publishers, Inc., 2002. Sources: Appalachian State University files and personal correspondence, and long association. -Dr. Richard D. Howe
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