GIST Program Director

Office: Room 308, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 287-2891
Email: mmcmilla@uwyo.edu

Beth McMillan joined the Wyoming Geographic Information Science Center (WyGISC) as director for academic programs in 2022. She is responsible for the operation and growth of WyGISC’s interdisciplinary undergraduate and graduate programs in Geospatial Information Science and Technology (GIST).  Prior to joining the University of Wyoming, she was a faculty member at University of Arkansas at Little Rock where she served as chairperson in the Department of Earth Sciences and as developer and coordinator of their graduate Geospatial Technology certificate program. She has taught GIS and Remote Sensing courses to graduate and undergraduate students for 18 years.

Beth received her BA in Geology from Colorado College, MS in Environmental Science and Engineering from Colorado School of Mines and PhD in Geology from the University of Wyoming. Her research interests focus on the interaction between external and internal Earth processes and how these shape landforms. Her dissertation was on the late Cenozoic landscape evolution of the Rocky Mountains which was inspired by remnant landforms in the basins and ranges of Wyoming.

Office: Room 336, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-2740
Email: bleonar6@uwyo.edu

Beth Leonard is the Business Manager for WyGISC joining the team in 2017. In this role she oversees all accounting functions, personnel, and financial reporting for the unit. Beth received her bachelor’s degree in Business from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs and has been in Laramie since 2013. She enjoys traveling, camping, hiking and volleyball, but can mostly be found spending time with her husband and chasing her two young daughters. 

Office Associate

Office: Room 337, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-2532
Email: cschofi3@uwyo.edu

Cody Schofield is the Office Associate for WyGISC. In this role, he works on the center’s social media pages, website development, student registration, and other business administration-related tasks. He joined in May 2020 and is a graduate of the University of Wyoming with a bachelor’s degree in Communication. Cody enjoys working in marketing, advertising, and public relations. When Cody is not working at WyGISC, you can find him playing golf, hiking, snowboarding, or hanging out around Laramie.

Senior Research Scientist

Office: Room 323, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 223-2129 
Email: salbeke@uwyo.edu

Dr. Shannon Albeke has been part of WyGISC since 2010 and is a Senior Research Scientist and Faculty member. His primary research focuses around applied GIS, programming and statistics. As such, he provides research support for faculty and graduate students within the Program in Ecology as well as many other departments and programs within UW. His teaching centers on database management and applied GIS methods using primarily open source software.

Shannon earned a B.A. in Environmental Sciences with minors in Geography and Geology in 1997 from the University of Colorado – Boulder. He then began an 8-year career as an Aquatic Habitat Biologist for the Colorado Division of Wildlife, and by necessity, learned how to be a GeoSpatial Data Scientist. In 2006, he resigned from CDOW to become a PhD student at the University of Georgia where he worked on Coastal River Otters in Prince William Sound, AK , earning his PhD in 2010.

More information about Shannon's work >

Geospatial Analyst

Office: Room 306, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-6649
Email: mberends@uwyo.edu

Margo Berendsen is a GIS analyst, educator, and research scientist at the University of Wyoming. She teaches courses on Geospatial Foundations, Spatial Data Visualization, and works on various research projects and GIS analysis projects. She co-authored the Wyoming Student Atlas, a publication that has been distributed to all Wyoming elementary and middle schools, and developed the Atlas into a series of standards-based interactive story maps as another K-12 education resource. She is currently working on an NSF study on how learning with GIS improves spatial thinking.

Margo received her MA in Geography from the State University of New York at Buffalo and holds a GISP from the GIS Certification Institute. She is a member of the American Association of Geographers, the Wyoming Geographic Alliance, and Women in GIS. She is an avid reader and loves hiking and riding horses in the mountains with family and friends.

More information about Margo's work >

Office: Room 326, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-2532
Email: ncase2@uwyo.edu

Nicholas Case has been a part of WyGISC since 2018 currently works as a Geospatial Developer. He is the development arm of the EPSCoR Micro project's Data Team and responsible for creating and maintaining the Laboratory Inventory Management System (LIMS) designed to track samples starting from the field through analyses. Additionally, Case is a teaching assistant to Dr. Shannon Albeke in the GIST department. He helps design course content, assessments, and moderates discussion boards that interface directly with students.

Nicholas obtained his bachelor's degree of arts and sciences in anthropology from San Diego State University and an associate's degree of science in geography from San Diego Mesa College. He is currently a master's student in the GIST program focusing on learning new methods and technologies that enable researchers and decision-makers to glean information from data that may not be readily visible on its own.

Office: Room 323, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-2532
Email: sewers@uwyo.edu

Samantha Ewers is a Geospatial Specialist for WyGISC. She joined WyGISC in 2014 as a data manager for an NSF EPSCoR grant in spatial hydrology and now spatial microbial diversity.  Samantha’s primary focus has been to perform data management for academic research projects and research groups. She also assists with development and maintenance of data management for projects and applications across WyGISC. Samantha is a member of Women in GIS and holds a Bachelor’s in Civil Engineering from North Carolina State University. She enjoys being outside hiking and more recently gardening and is an avid quilter.

Senior Research Scientist

Office: Room 308, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-3709
Email: phodza@uwyo.edu

Paddington Hodza is a Senior Research Scientist at WyGISC. He is a native of Zimbabwe where he completed BSc Surveying and MSc Land and Geographic Information Systems at the University of Zimbabwe. Paddington worked for World Wide Fund for Nature and Environment and Remote Sensing Institute before moving to the U.S. in 2002 to pursue a PhD in Geography at West Virginia University. He joined University of Colorado, Colorado Springs in 2007 where he directed the GIScience Certificate program for which he led the development. He is a certified GIS Professional, licensed FAA Drone Pilot, recipient of Carnegie African Diaspora Fellowship and Leadership Wyoming alumnus. He was elected to the UCGIS Board of Directors for a 3-year term beginning in 2019 and serves on UCGIS Education Committee and University of Wyoming Faculty Senate. His current research interests include UAS, multimodal GIS education, positivity GIS, immersive geovisualization and spatial data science.

Geospatial Specialist

Office: Room 304, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-2532
Email: sgl55@uwyo.edu

Shawn Lanning is a Geospatial Specialist at WyGISC.  Shawn’s work includes management and technical support for WyGISC server infrastructure, geospatial tool and task development/automation, and user assistance for the Wyoming Geospatial Hub.  He also holds an FAA sUAS (drone) remote pilot license and has research interests in collecting drone data for a wide variety of projects.

Shawn received his master’s degree from the University of Wyoming Geography Department in 2005, where he focused on developing a pronghorn migration and habitat model that allowed for updated user inputs to better reflect real world conditions.  He holds the designation of GIS Professional (GISP) by the GIS Certification Institute and is a founding member of the Wyoming Geospatial Organization (WyGEO) where he served on the board for the first seven years of the organization’s existence.  Shawn enjoys hunting, fishing, anything sports related, brewing beer, and smoking/bbqing in his free time.

Assistant Professor

Office: Room 329, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-2749
Email: amadson@uwyo.edu

Austin Madson is an assistant professor at WyGISC. He received his PhD from UCLA in the Department of Geography in 2020 and leads classes in Remote Sensing (RS) and UAVs within the WyGISC GIST framework. He is a physical geographer with research interests within the Earth and geoscience realms. In particular, Austin utilizes advanced RS techniques (insar, lidar, optical) along with computational modeling and field instrumentation to study hydrologic and geomorphologic changes. He has interests in geodesy, Raspberry Pi projects, cluster computing, data processing parallelization, data visualization, open-source programming, low-cost GNSS hardware, semi-autonomous rover and UAV construction, sensor fusion, UAS data acquisition, SfM, lidar and radar RS techniques, real-world applications in the use of RS and GIS, and the integration of RS and GIS technologies. Austin enjoys tinkering on projects, fieldwork, soccer, and just soaking up the outdoors.

More information about Austin's work >

Geospatial Project Coordinator

Office: Room 326, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-2532
Email: jmckay6@uwyo.edu

Jalynda Mckay is a Geospatial Project Coordinator with WyGISC, where she's been working since 2016 designing and building geospatial web applications from start to finish. Jalynda has served as the Vice President of the Board of Directors for the Wyoming Geospatial Organization (WyGeo) and is an active member of WyGeo and Women in GIS. Her research interests include developing natural resource management tools, computer programming, and data management. When not programming geospatial apps you can usually find her riding her mountain bike in the hills around Laramie, boating on the many rivers in the West, or skiing in the backcountry.

Geospatial Technician

Office: Room 319, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-2532
Email: msanecki@uwyo.edu

Michelle North has been a geospatial technician at WyGISC since 2014.  Projects she has worked on include the DDCT (now OneSteppe) and the UW campus map.  Additionally, she developed a map to help consumers connect with local farms across the US.  Michelle grew up in Casper and received her BS in Geography from the University of Wyoming.  When she’s not working, Michelle enjoys spending time with her husband and dogs, gardening, and hiking in the mountains.  

Geospatial Analyst
WyGISC

Office: Room 323, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-2532
Email: luke.todd@uwyo.edu

Luke Todd is a Geospatial Analyst for WyGISC. Luke received his MS in Agricultural and Applied Economics, and Environment and Natural Resources from the University of Wyoming in 2015. Since then he has worked as a Data Analyst for the state of Wyoming and an Assistant Research Scientist at the Wyoming Survey & Analysis Center. He enjoys cycling, nordic skiing, and generally being outside.

Geospatial Technician 
WyGISC

Office: Room 321, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-2532
Email: nwilli21@uwyo.edu

Natalie Williams is a Geospatial Technician for WyGISC. Where she assists with several web development projects for both WyGISC and many of their additional websites and web projects. She joined in September of 2018 and is a University of Wyoming graduate with a bachelor’s degree in Geology. Natalie’s interests include hiking, computer science, and literature.

Geospatial Developer

Office: Room 326, Agriculture C
Phone: (307) 766-2532
Email: bwriter@uwyo.edu

Jason Writer has been a WyGISC team member since 2011. Initially hired as a GIS Technician, he developed a database and desktop application to capture range-wide Redband trout distribution data and spent three months in the Northwest leading data entry workshops with teams of biologists and GIS professionals. Jason has served in several roles with the center, including Research Scientist Associate. He is currently a Geospatial Developer, where he continues to work with natural resource managers to develop web-enabled geospatial applications. He holds a GISP from the GIS Certification Institute and, when not in AG 326cc, enjoys backpacking, cycling, and playing music.