Cave Bio Educator Workshop
Saturday 5 and Sunday 6 December 2026, 9am to 4pm both days
Paint Rock Forest Research Center, Trenton, Alabama
This two-day professional learning experience prepares educators to use caves, karst landscapes, groundwater, and subterranean biodiversity as engaging contexts for standards-based science instruction. Participants work through inquiry investigations, models, data-analysis tasks, and classroom-ready activities addressing cave formation, groundwater movement and contamination, ecosystem energy flow, biodiversity, adaptation and evolution, conservation, and scientific investigation. The workshop emphasizes evidence-based reasoning, modeling, authentic Alabama examples, and adaptation of activities for middle- and high-school classrooms. Includes cave trips.
There is no registration fee. Lunch and snacks are provided, and overnight lodging is available on site. The workshop is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation under Award No. 2047939.
Space is limited, and we will confirm your registration by email. We expect you to register for both days, since the second builds on the first.
For more information or questions, please contact Dr. Matthew L. Niemiller at matthew.niemiller@uah.edu.
Two sessions are underground. The caves are horizontal walking caves with uneven, muddy
footing, some stooping, and no vertical work. We provide helmets, lights, and kneepads.
Nothing about it requires previous caving experience.
You are welcome at the workshop whether or not you go underground: there is a parallel
surface activity, and choosing it costs you nothing.
