Student Awards 2026

Charlie Barbaro has taken ten courses in the major, ranging from World Regional to Weather & Climate, Qualitative Methods to Remote Sensing, and Race & Place to GIS Applications in Public Health, earning As in each of these classes. Starting in spring 2026, he’s been interning with the John Dos Passos Institute which has a small property in Westmoreland County; he is compiling GIS layers and figuring out geodatabase management as he goes. The variety of courses that this student has taken exemplifies Dick Palmieri’s embrace of knowing something about a lot of different subjects.

This award is given to one of our seniors who is enthusiastic about being a major and works to share a passion for Geography with other students. Our winner this year is Mason Newton, who is truly excited about a lot of things. He is curious and interested in learning beyond the classroom. He is currently cleaning and standardizing the geodatabases created by several different mobile GIS students for facilities projects, making sure that there is no extraneous data, and standardizing assessments. According to his faculty mentor, “he’s really into it!” He also compiled a playlist dedicated to Dr. Nicholas for our 2026 Banquet!

This year’s winner is Allison Parrish. Allison has had a variety of experiences in the department. She was part of Dr. Finlayson’s Eurovision project and specifically took the lead on analyzing the winners’ song catalogs, seeking to understand whether English or their native language was more dominant. Last year, she interned with Healthy Generations Agency on Aging, creating transportation reference guides for elderly populations. Allison is currently working as the Community Outreach and Impact intern at Hazel Hill for the National Housing Trust, which is dedicated to creating affordable housing. Her GIS capstone used the current FXBGO! bus system to recommend updates to stops for the FXBGO! Bus station and included a story map with images and explanations of routes, which will also teach people how to ride the bus! Allison is clearly passionate about transportation, community and equity.

Key Tyler is our winner this year! Her exemplary record of accomplishment in GIS and other methods courses is matched by her contributions in the community. She has examined earthquake risk and evacuation routes near the Lake Anna nuclear station, producing a story map and presenting her work publicly last October. She digitized and produced cartographic products from the participatory maps collected during Dr. Millones’s field work with indigenous peoples in Peru, automating part of the process using a python code that she wrote herself. She compiled, geocoded and organized a dataset of publicly funded projects that promoted alternative crops of cacao and coffee in Peru in lieu of coca cultivation. During her senior year, Key served as the American Association of Geographers’ Assistant Cartography Editor. She also completed her GIS capstone, which explores how including indicators of the built environment might lead to a better model for explaining the distribution of violent crime.

The award this year goes to Lillianne Fish, who is majoring in Environmental Science, minoring in Urban Studies, and earned her GISC certificate. Lillianne was the primary geospatial research assistant for the Mattaponi Project, organizing GIS data, creating maps for presentations and publications, and collected field data to map debris and sample locations. Most significantly, she transformed the mental maps collected during the oral history interviews into geospatial data – specifically into areas where, according to members of the tribe, hazardous materials had been dumped. These areas determined where the team sampled sediments and water for pollutants ensuring that they incorporated local, Indigenous knowledge into the project. For her GIS capstone project, Lillianne used Esri’s Experience Builder to create a web map for our Mattaponi partners.

This is the easiest award for the department to give because it simply goes to the graduating senior with the highest GPA. This year’s winner has a GPA of 3.81 earned in a variety of courses from GIS to Qualitative Methods to Biogeography. She is finishing her career as a Geography major exploring Geographies of the Future with Dr. Finlayson. She expects to study library science in graduate school next year. Outside of geography, she’s active as a clarinet player in the UMW concert band.

The Lewis & Clark Award goes to Hannah Kaiser.

The first is awarded to Victoria VanDevender, who is a recent arrival on campus and is pursuing a double major in Geospatial Analysis and Psychology. Victoria is interested in the fields of urban planning and GIS; specifically, how they can help her understand behavior and crime. Her long-term goal is to work in federal law enforcement. She has already impressed us with her level of engagement in her coursework. We look forward to getting to know her better and see her develop her skill set in Geospatial Analysis.

The second is awarded to Maggie Alt, a sophomore who has chosen to major in both Geospatial Analysis and Historic Preservation. Maggie has been working with faculty members and other students on a project involving racially restrictive covenants. She has done excellent work building an ArcGIS online map showing both Black-owned parcels and parcels with racially restrictive covenants in mid 20^th century Fredericksburg. Maggie and another student presented this research at various venues across the state in Spring 2026.

Last summer, Charlie participated in the Summer Science Institute working under the mentorship of Dr. Yin, when had the opportunity to execute a research project from conceptualization to the presentation of results. His project explored the spatiotemporal patterns of multi-vehicle crashes in Fairfax County. He presented the results of this project at the Network for Undergraduate Research in Virginia Conference earlier this year, where undergraduate students from across Virginia shared their research. This experience allowed him to apply GIS skills that he had learned in the classroom to a real-world problem, and develop a thorough understanding of the research process as it applies to GIS. So far, Charlie has completed 36 credits in GIS and Geography, while maintaining a 4.0 major GPA.

This year, the scholarship goes to Sarala Kennedy. To paraphrase Sarala’s application letter: Dr. Bowen’s Eastern and Western courses made the theoretical concepts real in connection to the phenomena they help explain. Daily exploration of specific places opened my eyes to the tangible interactions between the physical environment, economy, history, and culture and their impact on the landscape. Learning about the history of surveying and the physics involved in historic and contemporary geospatial satellite systems in Dr. Gallagher’s Mobile GIS class helped me connect such efforts to the places involved. My class project collecting point data of public art in Fredericksburg has remained relevant to planning and urban studies classes.