MAGIP Scholarship and Grants Accomplishment Report 2026
Robert Ahl
Greetings MAGIP,
It was a real pleasure to spend time with many of you at 2026 Big Sky GeoCon! As we head into the summer season I want to thank you for supporting the Scholarship and Grants Committee, and give you a final update on what we accomplished this year.
The awards we made in 2026 included a K-12 Education Grant to the Yaak Valley Forest Council, and three Higher Education Scholarships to two PhD students at MSU, and one highly motivated undergraduate student at the University of Montana.
Establishing a relationship with the Yaak Valley Forest Council is exciting because they are offering a GIS summer camp to local students, which is also supported by the US Air Force and MSU. With that foundation, students will get a better understanding of how conservation is being planned and conducted in the Yaak Valley. We like this idea of a GIS summer camp and are pleased to support it.
Our Higher Education Scholarship recipients are all doing interesting and valuable work to support a resilient future backed by geographic analysis. Caroline Cane, out of the MSU Department of Ecology, is evaluating the difference between fuel treatments and catastrophic fires on wildlife movements, Daniel Bose from the MSU Department of Earth Sciences, is developing techniques for processing large data cubes that are used to interpret the complex relationships between sea surface temperature and precipitation is arid environments, and Beau Milton of UM’s Geoscience Department is accounting for the spatial variability of precipitation to help design an updated hydrologic monitoring system in the Blackfoot River watershed.
As we discussed at the meeting, we continue to work towards a long-term, self-sustaining mechanism to support our philanthropic efforts, and we will keep you abreast of the progress on that front. Please reach out if you have questions, comments, or suggestions.
Best wishes,
Robert Ahl, PhD, GISP
MAGIP Scholarship and Grants Committee Chair
For more information about the people and projects involved in these awards, please visit our page in the news section of the MAGIP website: https://www.magip.org/News/13633522