MadGegoNews: The place for UW Madison Department of Geography updates
Winter 2025
Welcome to MadGeogNews, your best source for anecdotes about map libraries. In this edition, you'll:

  • Explore an award-winning map of song lyrics
  • See the next generations in action
  • Meet our newest faculty member
  • Say hello to our new graduate students
  • Catch up on the newest articles and awards from across the department
  • Add our Science Hall Open House to your to-do list
  • Share your Science Hall stories
  • Send in an alumni update or volunteer to share what you've learned
  • Support the department in your end-of-year giving
  • Fine-tune how you connect with the department online

How Do You Map a Playlist?
Two students pose with award certificates
Qianheng Zhang and Yanbing Chen pose with their NACIS award certificates
Two geography PhD students, Yanbing Chen and Qianheng Zhang, worked together to create an interactive map that links Cantonese pop song lyrics to their real-world locations in Hong Kong and beyond.

Explore their award-winning (and extremely cool) project.

Mapping with Middle Schoolers
Thanks to cartography graduate students Gareth Baldrica-Franklin, Alton Hipps, Nuzhat Tabassum Nawshin, and Helen Tosteson, a group of kids from Wingra School discovered the basics of mapmaking in September.

See the thoughtful and engaging activities our amazing geograds prepared for the occasion.
Two middle schoolers work at a table
Students from Wingra School participate in mapping activities led by geography graduate students

Dr. Maddy Kroot Brings New Energy
Maddy Kroot smiles for the camera
Assistant Professor Maddy Kroot
Assistant Professor Maddy Kroot, the newest member of our faculty, joined us this fall and hit the ground running, offering a graduate seminar in her first semester!

We asked her to share some insights about her background, what drives her, and what she does when she's not in the classroom.

Find out how many pets Maddy has (and the research she's proudest of).

Welcome to our New Geograds!
Our new cohort of graduate students this year is small but mighty, and we couldn’t be more excited to welcome their unique backgrounds and interests to the department.

Read about what they're excited to investigate and what brought them to UW–Madison.
Five students pose in the Cart Lab
New geograds pose in the Cart Lab

Geographers in the News
  • Graduate student Gabriel Shapiro persuaded against investments in data centers in an op-ed for the Capital Times
  • Assistant Professor Maddy Kroot published a powerful online first paper about the political ecology of climate delay in Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space
  • PhD candidate Hilary Habeck Hunt published a paper in Geoinformatics and Data Analysis about using a GIS resilience model to identify promising religious and faith-owned lands for SW Michigan microhabitat restoration
  • PhD candidate Sahil Sasidharan received a Graduate Research Grant from the Phi Kappa Phi honor society and is using the funds to support his dissertation fieldwork in Delhi, India
  • Professor Jack Williams received a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to study how far species and ecosystems can move as environments change
  • Dr. Wendy Jepson (BA'94), currently University Professor in the Department of Geography at Texas A&M University, received the 2025 Alexander & Ilse Melamid Medal from the American Geographical Society for outstanding work on the dynamic relationship between human culture and natural resources
  • Hilary Habeck Hunt and graduate student Christina Dennis co-won the West Lakes Division of the American Association of Geographers 2025 Student Paper Award, Ph.D. Level 1st Place; Hunt's paper was titled “Collectively-Conserved Land: An alternative economies approach to conservation land tenure” and Dennis's was titled "Property-Level Conservation: Informal Habitat Protection On Private Lands In The Rural Midwest"
  • Professor Jenna Loyd and graduate students Lauren Gerlowski and Vignesh Ramachandran navigated how to teach as popular AI models became increasingly widespread—and now they published a paper about it
  • Assistant Professor and GIS Professional Programs Director Jonathan Nelson published an open access article in  KN - Journal of Cartography and Geographic Information about mapping spatial data across different levels of aggregation

Visit Science Hall — Open House This Spring
Want one last look at the Robinson Map Library? One more breathless jog up every step in the main staircase?

Science Hall will be renovated soon—so it's not going away, but it won't ever be exactly the same as you remember it.

This spring, we'll take an evening to celebrate Science Hall and all of its quirks with an open house. You'll be able to hear about the building's history, take a look around, and more. Keep an eye on our social media for more about this event—including a Save the Date announcement—soon!

Share Your Science Hall Memories
Science Hall has a long, storied history, and Geography students have been traversing its corridors and making memories in its lecture halls for decades.

UW will soon renovate this historic building. As we prepare to move into a temporary home, we'd love to hear your memories of this very special building.

If you've shared with us already, thank you! We'll start posting your Map Library tales and ghost stories in the new year. If you haven't—why wait? Share your Science Hall stories and pictures here.
Science Hall bricks with notes written on them by graduating students

Alumni Opportunities: Catch Up & Help Out!
Science Hall bricks with notes written on them by graduating students
Have you made strides in your career or accomplished something you’re excited to share? Let other Geography alumni know! Fill out our Alumni Updates form and look for updates in a future newsletter.

Interested in sharing what you've learned with Geography students? Volunteer with SuccessWorks, the personal and professional development center for the College of Letters & Science.

SuccessWorks offers opportunities to guide and mentor students based on what’s most important to them, in all formats from 1:1 mentorship to speaking in courses to student-alumni networking events. Fill out this short form and share how you’d like to get involved.

Support the Department of Geography
Contributions from our alumni and friends mean so much to us—and they're crucial in these times as we strive to broaden our students' horizons with travel, professional meetings, independent field work, and more.

Please consider supporting the department in your end-of-year giving. Click here to make a gift today.

Connect with the Department
You don't have to wait for this e-newsletter to land in your inbox; we publish regular updates across the web. Follow the pages that make sense for your personal social media consumption ecosystem:

  • UW–Madison Department of Geography LinkedIn page for official updates from the department
  • UW–Madison Department of Geography Community LinkedIn group for networking
  • Instagram
  • Facebook
  • Our website
Geography Club students pose with pumpkins carved to read GEOGRAPHY
Geography Club students carved the traditional Geography pumpkins on October 28
GISPP Director Jonathan Nelson and GISPP student Eugenie Huang enjoy Codie See's Map Chat presentation

UW Cart Lab students, faculty, and staff join alumni at the North American Cartographic Information Society (NACIS) annual meeting in October
 
Instagram icon with Geog link LinkedIn icon with Geog link
UW-Madison Department of Geography
 
 
UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN–MADISON
550 N. Park Street  |  Madison, WI 53706
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