Shawn Morgan: Designing A Map for the Future

“Not everybody wants to hear they’re doing it wrong,” Shawn Morgan admits, reflecting on his years as a GIS educator. “But the time to do that is in education.”

It’s a philosophy that’s defined Shawn’s career. After more than 30 years in Geographic Information Systems (GIS), he's become a cornerstone of Canada's geospatial community—not just for his technical expertise, but for the thousands of students he’s helped launch into careers. At Fleming College, where he’s taught since 2013, Shawn became more than a teacher. He became a mentor, a guide, and, in many cases, the reason someone found their calling in GIS.

“I realized I have a passion to bring people along on that passion ride,” he says. Whether in a classroom or on the ground in Southern Africa, Shawn is the kind of educator who doesn’t just teach—he empowers.

That passion for GIS started with maps. As a kid, Shawn would gaze out of airplane windows, imagining the patterns of cities and rivers below. Later, he’d turn that curiosity into a career—building web-based mapping systems before the internet was fully mainstream. But what sets him apart is not just a love for maps; it’s how he uses them to serve people.

“I’ve always said it’s not about the technology. It’s about the people,” he explains. “You can build something technically amazing. But if the maintenance guy can’t use it, it’s not solving the real problem.”

That people-first mindset came into sharp focus during a recent GIS project in Africa, where Shawn and four students partnered with the Southern African Wildlife College. Their mission: create simple, sustainable tools to help track rhinos, manage invasive species, and map critical data for conservation work. “Every person there had the knowledge,” Shawn says, “but when they left, that knowledge left with them. GIS gave us a way to preserve it.”

Yet despite his impact, Shawn’s most difficult challenge came close to home. Fleming College, once a leading force in GIS education, suspended its postgraduate GIS program—a decision that sent shockwaves through the Canadian geospatial community.

“That felt like a gut punch,” he admits. “We had just graduated the last official class. The connection I felt to those students—knowing it was the end of an era—it was hard.”

Still, Shawn isn’t done teaching. He believes GIS is evolving, moving beyond government and into mainstream business and analytics.

“We need to stop hoarding GIS. We need to share it. It's time to start speaking the language of business, to focus on data, to show how GIS solves real problems.”

For now, he’s taking the long view—like a geographer would. “Fleming was just the bus,” he says. “The students were the passengers. And the knowledge we built together—that’s not going away.”