Dr. Ian Muehlenhaus joined the department in July as the director of our new online masters program in GIS and web map development. He is responsible for development, marketing and administration of the program as well as teaching two of the online courses.

A Duluth, Minnesota native, Ian earned his M.S. in Geog­ra­phy at Penn State Uni­ver­sity in 2002 and his Ph.D. in Geog­ra­phy at the Uni­ver­sity of Min­nesota in 2010. He returned to his upper midwest roots, with his wife Birgit and two daughters, from James Madison University in Virginia where he was an assistant professor in their Department of Geosciences.

Ian’s teaching and research background is in map design and GIS.  He has been pub­lished in a vari­ety of jour­nals, includ­ing:

– The Car­to­graphic Jour­nal
– Car­tog­ra­phy and Geo­graph­i­cal Infor­ma­tion Sci­ence (CaGIS)
– Car­to­graph­ica
– Car­to­graphic Per­spec­tives

Ian also authored a textbook on web and mobile map design — Web Car­tog­ra­phy: Map Design for Interactive and Mobile Devices. His goal was to write a book that was easy to read and not bogged down in overly technical terminology — a style you will find he mimics in his teaching approach.

As for outreach, Ian is currently the Vice-Chair of the International Cartographic Association’s Commission on Map Design. He is the Coor­di­na­torof the annual Cartography and GIS Map Competition (CaGIS), a Director  of the same organization, an Edi­to­r­ial Board Mem­ber of Car­to­graphic Per­spec­tives, and an Associate Editor for the Jour­nal of Maps.

Ian has worked as a con­sul­tant for the National Geo­graphic Soci­ety and National Endow­ment for the Arts, and lec­tured on effec­tive map design at the NASA God­dard Space Flight Cen­ter.

Ian loves spread­ing the word about GIS, mapping, and this program! If you would like to have Ian come speak to your group about UW-Madison’s Masters in GIS & Web Map Programming, or conduct a webinar, please don’t hesitate to drop him a line.