I am a PhD candidate in the Department of Geography at the University @ Buffalo and a recipient of one of the original fellowships from the first NSF IGERT grant.   I graduated with honors from University of Wyoming with B.S. in Geography and Sociology and minors in International Studies and Women's Studies in 1999.   As an IGERT fellow, I have been afforded opportunities to be involved in many interesting projects.  These include:

• Guatemala Land Registration Cadastral GIS Consulting Project, sponsored by USAID and ETJ in Guatemala City, Guatemala (Summer 2001)
• An internship with Lovejoy District Neighborhood Revitalization Services, a client-based planning organization, located on the East Side of Buffalo where I was involved in the preparation of the Seneca South Buffalo Community Plan and the Lower West Side Revitalization Plan.   This internship was instrumental in developing my dissertation research topic
• Attendance of the Vespucci Institute Summer School workshop "Research Methods and Progress in Spatial Data Infrastructures" July 12-16, 2004 Fattori, Montebeni (near Fiesole), Italy
• Follow-up visit to Guatemala (May 2004) funded by IGERT Special Project Grant "A Collaborative Approach to Support Participatory GIS for Guatemalan Land Registration"   IGERT in Geographic information Science NSF Grant #DGE-9870668 – Christopher Badurk, LaDona Knigge, Dr. Miguel Chacon Veliz, Wendy Miller, Joseph Morgan Dr. Douglas Flewelling, and Luis Molina

In December of 2004, I defended my research proposal entitled "Emerging Public Spaces in Marginalized Places:   Enacting Citizenship through Spatial Practices in Community Gardens in Buffalo, NY" and I am in the final stages of writing my dissertation.  My research is focused on community gardening within the City of Buffalo in the following three ways: First, I am interested in the social and political dimensions of the everyday spatial practices surrounding community gardening in Buffalo, NY, particularly as they relate to rights of citizenship and civic engagement. Second, my research involves the use of geographic information systems (GIS)   for analysis of census, housing and other demographic data and seeks to expand its use to include historical information and other forms of local knowledge, which is qualitative in nature in the GIS in order to represent change at a local scale over time.   Finally, this research seeks to conceptualize and demonstrate an integrated analytical method for using the interplay of qualitative and quantitative research through GIS that allows theory to emerge from the data through the use of grounded theory, GIS-enabled visualization and exploratory data analysis (EDA).  My research was featured in an article in the UB Reporter entitled Documenting the life history of a vacant lot.

I enjoy running, swimming and sharing good food and wine with friends and family.  I was just married on October 10, 2005 to Willis Geer, who moved to Buffalo with me in 1999.  I have two children: Rebekah, who is an architectural engineer in Virginia Beach, VA and Michael, who is currently a student at Buffalo State College.   And with my recent marriage, I now have two step-children, Tracey, who is a clinical psychologist in Tucson, Arizona, and Blaine, who is a manager for an industrial electric company in Gillette, Wyoming.