Mapping the world from Antarctica to Alabama

A Troy University professor has surveyed land across the globe, from the glaciers of Antarctica to the highways of Alabama.  

Dr. Bill Hazelton is a professor within Troy University’s Department of Geospatial Informatics and has been teaching a variety of surveying and geographic information sciences (GIS) classes for over seven years at Troy. Hazelton studied surveying at the University of Melbourne for his undergraduate degree.  

“It was just something that was there and looked interesting,” said Hazelton in a TrojanVision interview with Dr. Stefanie East. “It gave me some outdoor work, some indoor work, a mix of mathematics and turned out to be quite a bit of computing in there.  

“As you dive in further, there’s more and more interesting bits. I had no idea that geodesy and photogrammetry existed beforehand, but it gave me a lot of opportunities to do a wide range of different things in my career.” 

After graduating, Hazelton began working with the Australian Water Commission, mapping waterways across the country with state-of-the-art equipment for the time period.  

“I worked as a surveyor with the water commission and state resources [...] that was responsible for irrigation, water across the state, not much in the way of urban water,” Hazelton said. “That was a really, really good experience because we were one of the more advanced organizations in the country.”  

Hazelton then traveled to Antarctica in 1986 to work as a glaciologist, where he measured the movement of an ice sheet and the compaction of snow for 13 months.  

After his time in Antarctica, Hazelton returned to Australia to earn his Ph.D. in geospatial information sciences from the University of Melbourne. He taught at a small college in Australia before taking a hop across the pond to teach and help develop the surveying and GIS department at Ohio State. After Ohio State, he taught in Michigan and later in Alaska.  

In 2018, different disciplines were merged to form Troy’s geospatial informatics department, and Dr. Xutong Niu was going to become the head of the department.  

Dr. Niu was one of Hazelton’s students at Ohio State, so he reached out to Hazelton, asking him if he knew of anyone who would be interested in working at Troy. After a year of debate, Hazelton applied for the job himself and got the position. 

Dr. Niu was excited to be reunited with one of his favorite professors and has loved having him at Troy ever since.  

“He’s a very dedicated person and a dedicated professor,” Niu said. “He does research well, and he teaches well. Every day, we learn something new from him.” 

Since coming to Troy, Hazelton has enjoyed teaching a variety of surveying and GIS classes at Troy and has helped design the Alabama State Plane Coordinate System.  

Those interested in contacting Hazelton to learn more about what surveying and GIS has to offer are welcome to reach him at nhazelton@troy.edu.