Charlotte Community Remembers Geography and Earth Sciences Faculty Member Harry Campbell

Harrison (Harry) Sherwood Campbell Jr., 60, a professor in the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, died Saturday, Oct. 8. A celebration of life will be held Friday, Oct. 14, at Heritage Funeral Home, 3700 Forest Lawn Drive, Matthews, North Carolina. The family will receive friends beginning at 5 p.m., followed by a celebration of life starting at 6 p.m. Details about his life and the service in his memory are found here.

“Dr. Campbell’s wisdom, his dedication to students, his fellowship, and laugh will be missed immensely,” a statement from the Department of Geography and Earth Sciences noted. “His impacts and influences are far-reaching to all of the students he guided, in the support and friendship he provided to colleagues, to his dedication to UNC Charlotte, and to his work in applied geography and the Charlotte region.”

Campbell joined the UNC Charlotte faculty in August 1996. As an economic geographer at UNC Charlotte for nearly 25 years, Campbell focused on understanding the nature of place, and, more importantly, communicating what he learned to his community, students, and colleagues. In addition to his often pathbreaking scholarship, his partnership with the Charlotte Chamber of Commerce to project local economic growth helped to shape modern Charlotte. He was author of Charlotte’s Business Growth Index for many years. As an administrator, he played a significant role in developing new degree programs in Geography, Public Policy, and Environmental Sciences.

His research and teaching addressed urban and regional development, spatial income distribution, and the geography of economic wellbeing. Primarily centered on the U.S., his published work and technical reports analyze the regional implications of business location, regional job growth, and patterns of interregional income transmission. Most recently, his research looked at economic growth, amenities, income inequality, and their relationship to cost-of-living in U.S. metro areas.

As a long-time participant in the Applied Geography Conference, recently rebranded as AGX, he became executive director of AGX in January, 2022, working with academics and practitioners from the public, private and nonprofit sectors. Campbell earned doctoral and master’s degrees in geography from the University of Illinois and a bachelor’s degree in economics and geography from Clark University.