Background: 

1) What major(s), minors, and/or certificates you are working on at UMD?

My name is Abigail Stephens, and I am a senior Geography major, GIS minor at UMD.

2) What are your interests within your program(s)?  

My interest lies primarily in the human geography side, and using GIS as a tool to solve problems that lie in the economic geography realm.

3) What previous jobs, internships, and volunteer experience have you had?

I have interned at the Census Bureau in the Data Collection Coordination Branch of the Foreign Trade Division, and I am currently working as a Member Services Representative for Campus Recreation Services and as an undergraduate TA in the Geographic Sciences department.

4) Where you are from (optional)?

I call Forest Hill, Maryland home.
 

Internship:

1) Where you are interning?

I am currently interning at START (the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism) for the third semester.

2) What are your internship responsibilities?

My first semester was with the locations team for the Global Terrorism Database (GTD), locating and geocoding the locations of terrorist incidents around the worldAfter graduation,

3) What project(s) are you working on or contributing to?

I am currently working with the GIS team at START, working primarily on the Capabilities Detection Framework project. This project aims to evaluate the risk of U.S. counties to radiological attack, and their ability to deter or defend against such an attack

4) How is the internship experience relevant to your studies in Geographical Sciences?.

My experience with the GIS team has helped me to see how what I have learned in class can be applied to solving real world problems and research in topic areas that are not traditionally looked at from a geographic perspective.

5) What are your career goals after your graduate?

I plan to attend graduate school; beyond that I hope to continue to work in the field of counterterrorism research and continue to apply geographic thought processes and techniques to this ever-evolving, worldwide problem.