Voyager Search Partners With SpatialGIS Lab to Equip Fayetteville Students With Federal-Grade Geospatial and AI Data Skills

FAYETTEVILLE, N.C., Oct. 20, 2026 — Voyager Search and SpatialGIS, LLC today announced a partnership to equip student interns at the SpatialGIS Lab at Fayetteville State University (FSU) with enterprise spatial search technology and hands-on technical mentorship. The support will help the Lab train the next generation of geospatial, cloud, and artificial intelligence professionals. SpatialGIS is developing the FSU Lab as a model it plans to extend to other Historically Black Colleges and Universities.

The SpatialGIS Lab was built to give students the federal-grade experience that geospatial and intelligence employers look for. Located in a federally designated HUBZone, the Lab provides paid employment, industry certifications, and clearance sponsorship pathways for students from FSU, Fayetteville Technical Community College, and regional workforce programs. It also maintains an open-access workspace where student-developed intellectual property remains 100% student-owned. Every Saturday, the interns teach community youth GIS, drones, AI, and data literacy. The Lab also connects students to Department of Defense technology licensing and federally funded research.

Over the next year, Voyager is providing access to its Voyager Platform solution along with mentorship from Voyager's technical team. Interns will learn to index, structure, and search large spatial data repositories spanning satellite imagery, GIS files, documents, and databases. That work sits underneath nearly every AI and machine learning project in geospatial intelligence. Before a model can detect change in satellite imagery or flag a pattern across sensor data, someone has to find the right data, understand where it came from, and get it into usable shape. Interns who learn that step on an enterprise platform will be prepared for the data challenges federal and national security teams face today.

“Partnering with Voyager Search dramatically expands what our student interns can achieve in the Lab,” said Kendrick O. Faison, M.S. GSci, President and CEO of SpatialGIS. “Access to an enterprise platform capable of indexing millions of spatial records, paired with direct mentorship from industry veterans, gives our HBCU students hands-on experience with federal-grade tools. This contribution directly advances our mission to build a clearance-ready, highly skilled geospatial workforce right here in Fayetteville.”

Looking Ahead

Talent is evenly distributed. Access is not. The partnership between Voyager Search and SpatialGIS is built on that conviction. Every national security leader is asking where the next generation of geospatial and AI talent will come from. SpatialGIS believes much of the answer is already in classrooms across the HBCU network, and what those students lack is access, not ability. Picture a student in Fayetteville. On Tuesday she searches millions of spatial records on an enterprise platform. She owns what she invents. On Saturday she teaches her neighbors what she learned. At that point the workforce pipeline is no longer a talking point. It is infrastructure.

SpatialGIS and Voyager Search intend to prove the model at Fayetteville State, measure it, and scale it across the HBCU community. The goal is for the analysts, engineers, and data scientists who will safeguard the nation over the next thirty years to come from the communities that have too often been left out of the conversation.

“I've been in the geospatial industry for more than thirty years, and what has always mattered most is the people coming in behind you,” said Joel Campbell, Chief Revenue Officer of Voyager Search. “Kendrick is giving students real work, a chance to earn a paycheck, and ownership of their own ideas. If we can put good tools and some real-world guidance in their hands, I like to think they'll be ready for the national security and AI data challenges our industry is facing.”

About SpatialGIS, LLC and the SpatialGIS Lab

SpatialGIS, LLC is a Small Disadvantaged Business headquartered in a federally designated HUBZone in Fayetteville, North Carolina, with offices in Odenton, Maryland, and St. Louis, Missouri. The company specializes in geospatial intelligence (GEOINT), cloud modernization, AI/ML analytics, and cybersecurity. The SpatialGIS Lab is an HBCU-anchored innovation hub. It combines paid student employment, protection for student-owned IP, community technology training through the Saturday Leadership Academy, Department of Defense technology commercialization, and SBIR-funded research. Learn more at spatialgisservices.com.

About Voyager Search

Voyager is an enterprise software company that turns geospatial and enterprise data into an intelligence layer for real-world decisions. Since 2008, the company has helped government agencies and enterprises find, index, and enrich their spatial data, so it's ready for decision making when their teams need it. Their software and solutions help people in critical operating environments make better decisions because the data behind them is accurate, current, and trustworthy. 

Learn more at voyagersearch.com.

Media contacts

Kendrick O. Faison, President and CEO

SpatialGIS, LLC

kendrick@spatialgisservices.com | (301) 442-3914

Katie Hertel, Head of Brand & Marketing

Voyager Search

khertel@voyagersearch.com

###