Paul Larkin

Paul Larkin was involved with the construction of the original Staking U. field classroom in Pt. Huron, MI. Locating since 1994; he has 20-plus years of experience with all buried utilities, as well as, all electromagnetic locating instruments. He has held both training and management positions within the locating industry. Paul joined Staking U in 2005. Currently, Paul handles the day-to-day operations for Staking U and provides utility locating services throughout the country.

 Bill Mixer

Bill is a retired college professor. He was the chair of the Environmental Science department at Casper College in Casper,Wyoming where he taught water and wastewater operations, distribution and collection system operations, ASSE Cross Connection Certification, OSHA trenching safety and OSHA hazwoper. He also provided onsite technical assistance for the USEPA in water and wastewater system operations. Bill began teaching locating in 2006 in a first of its kind public/private partnership with Staking University, One Call of Wyoming, and Casper College. He has taught locating across the United States and in Australia. He and his wife of 35+ years reside in Casper, Wyoming where Bill also fly fishes and teaches fly fishing in his spare time.

Bud Jolly 

Bud received his training in communications while serving in the U.S. Army. Upon entering civilian life, he had a career in telecommunications with GTE for 29 years. Since his retirement in 1999, Bud has worked at Staking U. as Senior Instructor and Director of Training

Mario Mora

Mario has over 26 years of experience with line locating, standby procedures, and managing teams of locators with Anadarko Petroleum and Western Midstream, and oversaw all day-to-day operations for Colorado 811 utility locate tickets for both companies. Mario also monitored all locator routes for three different contract companies, and assisted with QC’s, QA’s, and damage investigations.

Dr. Dennis Prezbindowski 

Dennis is the principle GPR instructor for Staking University.
Dennis earned a PhD in Geology from the University of Texas at Austin in 1981 and has extensive experience with shallow and deep geophysical technologies. He is a certified professional geologist and a certified EM utility locator. He has extensive field experience in the use of GPR and other geophysical instrumentation for utility locating and subsurface site characterization. Dennis has presented numerous professional GPR seminars over the last 15 years and has published over 100 peer reviewed professional presentation and technical articles during his professional career.

Read Dr. Prezbindowski’s latest article in American Locator May 2019,
“Depths to Utility Targets as Determined by GPR Imaging: 
A Field Study of Factors that Affect Depth Calculations.”

 Thomas Larkin

Thomas is a Purdue University graduate, with a bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering. He has now worked with Staking University and Utility Locating, LLC since 2018, using and teaching electromagnetic locating, ground penetrating radar, structure scanning, and mapping.

Thomas has field experience with utility mapping projects across the greater Chicagoland area. Other experience includes work with UAVs, building computers, various programming languages, and camera work.

Alexis Herrera

Alexis is the newest addition to the team of trainers.
Currently, he is working as an assistant for electromagnetic locating and ground penetrating radar with Thomas and Paul. Alexis has a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and is looking to help advance the training curriculum for future students. Alexis is fluent in Spanish and has experience in construction of modern homes.