Although we were disappointed not to be able to honor Montana GIS students in general and particularly our MAGIP Higher Education Scholarship awardees at this year’s Big Sky GeoCon, we would like to share some success stories with you now.

This year MAGIP was fortunate to receive a record number of high-quality scholarship applications from Doctoral, Master, and Bachelor degree candidates at both the University of Montana and Montana State University.

While we would like to support all submitted projects, which included work on snow science, unmanned aerial systems and photogrammetry, wetlands and riparian systems assessment, geological hazards analysis, agricultural systems analysis and pest management, we worked long and hard to identify and award four scholarships, distributed to two Doctoral students, one Master’s degree student, and one Bachelor degree student. Below are the names, institutions, and project descriptions of those well-deserving awardees. 

Seth Mangini, PhD student
Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University“Southwestern Wetlands: Erosion, Geomorphology, and Implications for Restoration”

Sasha Loewen, PhD student
Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, Montana State University“Data driven adaptive management of organic dryland cropping systems” 

Zachary Miller, MS student
Department of Earth Sciences, Montana State University“Mapping Snow Depth Variability in Complex Mountain Terrain Using UAS and SfM Photogrammetry”

Lochlin Ermatinger, Bachelor degree student
Land Resources and Environmental Sciences, Montana State University
“Developing Spatial Tools and Methods for Integrated Pest Management of the Wheat Stem Sawfly (Cephus cinctus) in Montana’s Golden Triangle”

For more information you can read the Project Abstracts

Congratulations to each of the recipients!

Robert Ahl, PhD

MAGIP Education Committee Chair

https://www.magip.org/Scholarships/