Stephen is the geospatial information specialist at the AGS Library and his work includes obtaining, curating, and providing access to digital spatial data; providing data reference to researchers and students; providing instruction to GIScience and related courses; overseeing digitization of maps; and supervising GIS student interns. He is involved with the UWM Libraries Digital Preservation Community of Practice, Platform Review Task Force, and the Digital Humanities Lab.
Stephen is originally from Neenah, WI and holds an MS in Geography, GIS Certificate, and BS in Conservation and Environmental Science all from UW-Milwaukee. He started at the AGS Library as a GIS student assistant during graduate school and previously worked as a teaching assistant in the Department of Geography and a Tutor with Panther Academic Support Services.
Stephen’s interests include access to public geospatial data, critical GIS, critical cartography, biogeography, and data literacy. He has been a member of the American Association of Geographers since 2013. Stephen has published two papers since graduating: Facilitating PPGIS through university libraries with his graduate advisor Rina Ghose and Geodex 2.0: saving a legacy map series cartobibliography with AGS Curator Marcy Bidney. The later focused on Stephen’s work at the AGS library to modernize the unique Geodex system for indexing large paper map series. He is currently researching spatial data literacy instruction methods and theory.
Stephen can be contacted at srappel@uwm.edu