At MSU GIS Day, rural Montana students learn about mapping skills and career paths

BOZEMAN- One might not think river raft guiding and highly technical data collection can be complementary parts of a career - except, perhaps, for Eric Sproles, whose work at Montana State University has involved both.

In 2024, Sproles, an associate professor in the Department of Earth Sciences and Geospatial Core Facility director, started gathering key data from nine rivers in Chile to support a NASA satellite. This June, he shared his unique career path to an audience of middle and high school students from rural Montana for MSU's third annual GIS Day. GIS stands for Geographic Information System and is the technology that powers navigation devices, smartphone searches for local businesses and Google Earth.

Eight students ranging from seventh to 12th grades were hosted overnight by campus residence and dining halls prior to GIS Day. The day is the culmination of a weeklong Geospatial Skills Camp held in students' home communities with the support of MSU.

For the last three years, MSU has facilitated geospatial-focused camps for youth in rural Montana towns, enabled by an Air Force Office of Scientific Research grant to MSU's Science Math Resource Center. The camps have since been held in about 15 rural locations, including this year at Fort Peck Community College, Yaak Valley Forest Council, Bighorn County Extension and Hardin High School. The grant covers purchase of educational materials and allows campers to attend at no cost.

"This program is a bit unique, because instead of being held fully at MSU, we recruit and then train educators in rural communities to run a camp in their own town," said Suzi Taylor, director of the Science Math Resource Center. "This allows them to customize the camp to emphasize local places and resources that resonate with the students."

MSU provides support and curriculum for the local educators, including daily video presentations for campers by MSU speakers and agency scientists.

MSU alumna Maida Knapton, who graduated in 2024 with a degree in geospatial and environmental analysis, designed the current curriculum. She also works as a mapping specialist for Ranchers Stewardship Alliance, a locally led nonprofit out of eastern Montana focused on supporting ranching, collaborative conservation and rural communities. Her work at RSA informs the curriculum design and demonstrates how visualizing data can benefit community decision making. She taught the camp held in Malta last summer.

The main goal of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research's STEM program is to create science, technology, engineering and mathematics educational pathways and workforce opportunities for young people, said Taylor. In Montana, the program focuses on students in rural areas, helping them to see the wide range of available careers that connect to geospatial skills. Mapping skills and knowledge of GIS are increasingly in demand in the Air Force and in many industries, including natural resource management, social sciences, agriculture, conservation and environmental science.

Sproles' work with NASA provided one example of what a career in geospatial technologies involves. At GIS Day, he described his team's work on a NASA satellite project, called Surface Water and Ocean Topography, or SWOT, which measures the water surface elevation and water volume of the world's rivers to better inform water management decisions. As the satellite flew overhead, Sproles and his team took measurements below its path to confirm the satellite data's accuracy.

Outside Traphagen Hall, students saw up close the equipment Sproles's team used to do so, including a large raft designed to deploy sophisticated sensors that map and measure the shape of a river and its streamflow. The equipment was refined on the Yellowstone River before going abroad.

Other experts also gave tailored presentations for the students, including MSU's Knapton, who taught students how to read contour maps and led an exercise matching topographic map lines to various mountain terrain.

After lunch, the students toured the Bozeman Agricultural Research and Teaching farm near campus and heard from Krishna Rupavatharam, chief technology officer at MSU's Applied Quantum CORE, about plans to use a massive blimp that will fly above Bozeman and test communicating with ground stations through lasers instead of radio waves. The research program is funded by the Air Force Research Laboratory to explore future possibilities for quantum communications.

Finally, the group ended the day at MSU's Lutz Farm, where MSU MilTech staff demonstrated drones that do land surveys to support mapping, precision agriculture and other applications. Overall, from rafts to blimps to drones, the students saw firsthand the methods scientists use to collect data critical for GIS products.

Vryann Sison, a high school teacher with the Hardin School District who taught the local camp and attended GIS Day, said campers greatly enjoyed the hands-on activities and learning from each other's mapping projects. He said he hopes they came away with the ability to look at a map and generally understand how to interpret it, and such skills as finding the legend and identifying design choices that might make the map misleading.

Sison, who plans to integrate some of the activities into the school's earth science curriculum, noted that exposing students to geospatial skills early will help prepare them for college.

Knapton added that a portion of the curriculum changes each year based on where the camps are held and student interests. For example, one year a camp explored a project mapping elk and bison distribution in Montana. Another year, the project of choice involved mapping grasshopper density distribution in agricultural areas.

Kenna Griffin, a Hardin resident who is starting 10th grade this fall at Custer Public Schools, said her favorite part of camp was learning about maps and making new friends. At GIS Day, she especially enjoyed the contour map matching game led by Knapton.

Griffin likes learning about science and history in school and plans to go to college to become a veterinarian.

"I think more people should do camps like this, because even if it's not what you think you're interested in, you can still learn new things," she said.

Current grant funding extends through summer 2027, and people can apply to host a camp in their rural towns before Nov. 1 here: https://www.montana.edu/smrc/geo-skills.html. Additionally, next summer, a camp will be held at MSU in partnership with the Travis W. Atkins Veteran Support Center for teenage children of MSU students connected to the military.