Empowering Community Connections
As part of the interview process for this article, Tanner Alger ’25, a 2021 graduate of ϳԹ High School and current ϳԹ student, connected to our web meeting with his laptop from a table outside the Humanities and Social Science Center (HSSC) in the heart of campus, a testament to the ease at which we are able to connect to the internet on the College campus. The beautiful day which found him outside also came with some wind, which made the Wi-Fi connection impossible to maintain and caused the meeting to end prematurely.
In a follow up email, Alger pointed out how our struggle with a poor connection underscored the need for his work mapping rural internet connectivity. For many across the state, unstable or absent internet is a day-to-day reality. “We're not as connected as we think we are,” he said.
Alger is currently working with the College’s inaugural Social Innovator in Residence, Monica Sanders and members of the greater ϳԹ Community on a project that seeks to better map digital access disparities in some of the rural areas surrounding ϳԹ. As the Rural Internet Infrastructure Mapping Data Fellow for the Residence Rural Internet Access Enhancement Project, Alger is helping peers and local high school students map out gaps in broadband connectivity, technical work that is also personal in nature for someone who grew up in the area and experienced the shortfalls of connectivity.
Mapping to Empower Communities
Raised in ϳԹ from the age of five, Alger has strong ties to the ϳԹ community and will graduate in May with a degree in biology and a concentration in environmental studies. After stepping back from his leadership role in Pedal ϳԹ, the campus bike share program he helped launch, Alger was searching Handshake, the platform that has advertised student employment options on campus, when he came across position connected to the project. This local initiative was designed to be a companion to one that is part of a larger 10-state initiative led by Sanders and .
“I started looking into the project and it had an environmental justice aspect to it, which I appreciate and is kind of related to my degree,” he said. “I've spent more time on the technical and conservation side of things and not so much the social side of things, so I thought this would be a great opportunity.”
What sold him on the position was the chance to work with Geographic Information Systems (GIS) — a field he had explored in class; but wanted to experience more deeply in a real-world context. “You can take these huge data sets that are pretty much uninterpretable and then suddenly you can interpret them, and make sense of them,” he said.
Alger’s role in the project centers on using GIS software to analyze publicly available broadband data — examining upload and download speeds, service availability, and identifying gaps in coverage. Much of the work is focused on analyzing state and federal databases, as well as collaborating with Mahaska Communication Group (MCG), a telecommunications company based in Oskaloosa, Iowa, that serves as the primary internet service provider in ϳԹ.
However, it also includes working with local volunteers to assess actual data speeds and provide updated data that better represents where some of our local challenges exist. This information can then be used by our communities and internet providers to set priorities and advocate for improvements based on better and enhanced data.
“A lot of the work involves looking at public data and using some of MCG’s data to figure out where there are gaps in service,” Alger said. “The project’s long-term goal is to give the community ownership over the solutions and to provide some initial structure to help push the project so it's an ongoing thing.”
Sanders, who leads the broader initiative known as The Undivide Project, describes Alger as a vital part of the team. “It's been a great opportunity for The Undivide Project to benefit from Tanner’s local expertise while supporting him as he develops his GIS and analytics skills,” she said. “Tanner is also a joy to work with, grounding us all in his empathy for others and ability to connect with various perspectives from the community.”
Learning Through Data — and Disconnection
One of the most eye-opening lessons for Alger has been seeing how federal data fails to represent the reality of rural internet access that is better represented by the local data and the experiences of those living in the area. “A lot of the federal data is super overinflated and does a really bad job at communicating the situations that people are actually experiencing,” he said. “You look at the FCC broadband connectivity map of Iowa and it'll say that every area has one hundred percent coverage, and that's just not true.”
As someone who grew up in the area, Alger says it’s both validating and frustrating to see those disparities borne out in the data. This experience has deepened his understanding of how internet connectivity — or the lack of it — intersects with broader issues of equity.
“In my role, I’m gaining a broader understanding of how internet connectivity deepens inequalities, particularly in rural communities, and how this intersects with environmental justice,” he said. “While I’ve casually observed these disparities growing up it’s an entirely different experience to discuss these issues with a team and it’s rewarding to be actively working toward solutions.”
