Grad Student Part of Winning Team in National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency Competition
Group was guided by UNH Manchester adjunct faculty member John Borek
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Woman in a blue blazer stands in front of a poster presentation

Autumn Bedell ’25G (courtesy photo)

In the moments after winning a nationwide competition requiring the delivery of a persuasive argument using clear, concise and coherent language, the victorious team’s group chat was humorously devoid of any such polished communication.

Autumn Bedell ’25G was the lone UNH representative on the winning team at the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency’s (NGA) inaugural MAJIC Challenge this spring, outdueling teams of student analysts from around the country. Word of their victory came as something of a surprise to the team members, who responded by briefly abandoning precise phrasing in the exchange between them all.

“We were in total shock. There weren’t many words – just a stream of all-caps texts and disbelief,” says Bedell, a student in the program in UNH’s . “It was such a rewarding moment to see all of our hard work come together. It took a second to sink in, but we were beyond proud.”

Bedell was a member of the Surveyors, a team made up of her and three students from UMASS-Lowell – Katelyn Smith, Christopher Bonney and Thomas McAndrews – and guided by , adjunct faculty at UNH Manchester. The team was awarded first place for best tackling the competition’s topic, “China: A Strategic Outlook,” in the eyes of the judges – who also happen to be professionals in the field.

The team had a little less than a month to research the topic and put together their presentation. Because the event is sponsored by the NGA and one of the requirements was that arguments must include geospatial intelligence or information, the teams were granted access to the NGA’s open-source commercial imagery database of unclassified imagery.

The experience reflected the current trends in intelligence analysis, Borek says, as more and more work is being accomplished in groups.

“One of the things we stress in analysis courses is that the days of the analyst working alone are kind of gone. Most intelligence products these days are collaborative products,” he says. “The opportunity to work together as a team, these four people who hadn’t worked together previously, and to see that team gel and produce this really high-quality product was personally fantastic to me.”

For Bedell, working with team members from another university proved to be a rewarding experience, as she says it “really highlighted the value of diverse perspectives” as the team members each brought their own thoughts and experiences to the process of building a final presentation they were all proud of.

The competition also served as a way to bring knowledge from the classroom into a more tangible setting.

“One of the biggest things I took away was learning how to apply geospatial intelligence skills in a real-world context,” Bedell says. “It was a step beyond the classroom and really pushed us to think about how our analysis could inform decision-making.”

As winners, the team members receive additional benefits, as well. Borek notes that they will all receive free tickets to attend a symposium put on by the NGA, and they will also have the opportunity to travel to Washington, D.C. this summer to present in front of agency heads and staff from professional journals. Journalists have also offered to work with them to edit the final product and ultimately get it published.

“For the team members, that’s a great reward for the work they put into it,” Borek says.

Just being in close proximity to so many professionals in the field was beneficial to the students, Bedell says, as they were able to make connections that could benefit them as they embark on their professional journeys.

“It gave us a chance to connect with professionals in the intelligence community, and to see how my academic work can contribute to broader conversations in the field,” Bedell says. “It’s one thing to study these topics in class, but getting to present our findings to experts and receive feedback was incredibly rewarding.”

Adds Borek: “To see this come outside of the classroom, to actually work through real intelligence questions from a national agency and come up with an answer using geospatial data, and to be able to put out a product that is recognized as being very high-quality, as students that is kind of a big pat on the back for all of them.”

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