Ryan Hannahoe is the Executive Director of Montana Learning Center at Canyon Ferry Lake
(MLC). During the 10 years since Ryan joined MLC, he has grown its annual budget from
$100,000 to $650,000. He has added astronomy programs to MLC’s offerings and was
responsible for the creation of the Mike & Lynn Rice Astronomical Park on MLC’s campus,
which now has three observatories hosting five state-of-the-art telescopes. He was instrumental
in bringing additional NASA funding of nearly $1 million to Montana for K-12 STEM programs.
While Ryan was a student at MSU, he worked for NASA in a variety of capacities, including as a
NASA public outreach intern for the James Webb Space Telescope mission. He also has worked
at New Mexico Skies, a premier remote-use telescope observatory. Ryan’s astrophotography has
been featured by NASA and the Smithsonian, and is on permanent display at the Museum of the
Rockies.