Karen K. Kemp is Professor of the Practice of Spatial Science at the University of Southern California where she teaches in the online Geographic Information Science and Technology (GIST) Programsprograms. Since the late 1980s, Kemp has been a major figure in the evolution of GIS education. She coedited the 1990 National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis (NCGIA) Core Curriculum in GIS and was on the editorial team for the 2006 UCGIS Geographic Information Science and Technology Body of Knowledge. After completing her PhD in 1992 at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), under M. F. Goodchild, she held positions at University of Vienna, the NCGIA at UCSB, and University of California, Berkeley. In 2000, she became Founding Director of the MS GIS program at University of Redlands in California. Her scientific research has focused on the integration of environmental models with GIS from both the pedagogic and scientific perspectives and on formalizing the conceptual models of space acquired by scientists and scholars across a wide range of disciplines.