Professor Schneider earned her PhD in Geography and Environmental Science at Boston University, and was a faculty member at the University of California-Santa Barbara before coming to Wisconsin. Professor Schneider's research examines the causes and consequences of land cover change in urban and peri-urban environments, specifically the demographic, economic and policy changes responsible for rapid urbanization and urban sprawl, as well as the local- to global-scale environmental impacts that result. Her projects have been funded by the National Science Foundation, NASA's Land Cover-Land Use Change (LCLUC) Program and Interdisciplinary Science Program (IDS), the National Academy of Sciences, and the World Bank.