Jim Young is a Professor of Geography at Appalachian State University. He has been on the ASU faculty since 1993, serving as co-coordinator of the North Carolina Geographic Alliance most of the time since arriving in Boone. His expertise is in cartographic design and map use, but he also has taught courses in geographic writing, world regional geography, geography of Europe and Russia, geography of the United States and Canada, and the history of geography. He earned a Master degree in educational psychology and worked as a school psychologist prior to Ph.D. work in geography at the University of Minnesota. During his time in Minnesota, he was part of the team that developed the ARGUS (Activities and Readings in the Geography of the United States) materials.