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Dustin Luca
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SALEM, MASS. – Keith Ratner’s classrooms didn’t always have four walls.
Whether he was taking students camping in the Southwest United States or guiding them through Salem’s own planning challenges, Ratner spent 26 years at Salem State University helping students understand where they were and where they could go.
Geography wasn’t just a subject. To him, it was a tool for belonging.
Ratner, an Amesbury resident, retired as professor, former graduate program coordinator, and chairperson of Salem State’s geography and sustainability department on May 31, after first coming to Salem State College in 1999 as an assistant professor.
“Being a professor is the best job ever,” Ratner said. “But you never know where you’ll end up, so you send out applications to wherever, and Salem State was the best response I got.”
While Ratner modestly says he was “never a big researcher” in his time on campus, his legacy at Salem State reflects decades of real-world applications of geography brought to his students, from mapping recreation assets in Boston to regional planning to environmental assessment and urban geography. He coordinated the university’s graduate program in geo-information science for 12 years and brought his students into spaces few undergraduates get to enter academically—like the American Southwest.
Ratner is perhaps best known among students and colleagues for his field-based courses, especially his transformative trips to the American Southwest. These multi-week, cross-county excursions combined classroom study with camping in state and national parks, long days traveling desert landscapes, and invaluable lessons in teamwork.
“Everybody looks at me and goes, ‘that sounds like so much fun,’ and I say, ‘you try to feed 16 people for 16 days,’” Ratner said, laughing. “They’re transformative trips. When I went up for post-tenure review a couple years ago, I shared a trip reflection from one of my students, who said ‘this trip changed my life.’ She’s now getting a Ph.D. from Ohio State University.
“We don’t ‘teach’ geography in the United States,” Ratner continued. “My bottom line is the more we can get people to understand the world around us, or its geography, the more we can make it a better place. That has been my underlying goal in all of this.”
In retirement, Ratner plans to stay active in the Amesbury community, where he serves on the city’s Planning Board and represents the city on the Merrimack Valley Planning Commission.
Reflecting on his time at Salem State, Ratner said he remains grounded in what mattered most to him: the students.
“The thing I’m going to miss more than anything is the students, and Salem State students are pretty special,” Ratner said. “When you come to Salem State, you can make a really big difference in the kids.”
