Rickard Toomey is the director of the Mammoth Cave International Center for Science and Learning. The Center is a cooperative project of Western Kentucky University and Mammoth Cave National Park. In this position he works to promote research at the park and to improve public understanding of the cave and park.

Prior to becoming director of the Center, Rick has been the Science and Research Manager and Cave Resources Manager for Arizona State Parks. He has also been a Curator at the Illinois State Museum. He received his Ph.D. in Geological Sciences from the University of Texas, Austin in 1994.

Rick has been studying Mammoth Cave and its historic uses for approximately 10 years. His work has included using fossils found in the cave to understand how people have modified the cave over the past 200 years. In his spare time, he also helps to explore the caves of Mammoth Cave National Park.

In addition to project director, Dr. Toomey will be presenting attendence-optional presentations on Sunday evening on Mammoth Cave and Tuesday Evening on the history of it's exploaration.

Workshop Faculty: Day One

Darlene Applegate

Darlene Applegate is Associate Professor in the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology at Western Kentucky University, where she teaches undergraduate courses in archaeology and biological anthropology, serves as director of the Anthropology Program, and oversees the Anthropology Lab. She received her PhD from The Ohio State University in 1997.

Darlene's research interests include cave and rockshelter archaeology; mortuary archaeology, focusing on historic graveyards; bioarchaeology, or the study of human skeletal remains from archaeological sites; lithic analysis, or the study of stone artifacts; and settlement strategies in prehistory and history. She also is active in public archaeology education.

Since 2002 Darlene has served as the principal investigator on an archaeological site monitoring program at Mammoth Cave National Park. Darlene oversees student teams who regularly visit archaeological sites in the park and evaluate their condition.

Dr. A. Gwynn Henderson

Dr. A. Gwynn Henderson is a staff archaeologist and education coordinator for the Kentucky Archaeological Survey in Lexington. She has accumulated over twenty years of archaeological experience in Kentucky with state agencies and private companies, including the University of Kentucky's Program for Cultural Resource Assessment, the Kentucky State Nature Preserves Commission, Environment Consultants, and Cultural Resource Analysts.

Henderson received a baccalaureate degree in anthropology from the University of Delaware and masterŐs and doctorate degrees in anthropology from the University of Kentucky. Her dissertation research focused on Middle Fort Ancient (circa AD 1200 to 1400) villages and organizational complexity in central Kentucky. Henderson is an expert on late prehistoric and protohistoric Indian occupations in the Middle Ohio Valley and has extensive knowledge of late prehistoric pottery traditions.

A devoted educator, Henderson has written many archaeological publications for children and the general public, and worked with her education colleagues to develop curriculum units for teachers. She conducts teacher workshops, visits school classrooms, assists in the production of archaeology videos, and prepares educational displays on a variety of archaeological topics. Henderson serves as the Kentucky state coordinator for Project Archaeology, a nationwide public education program of the U.S. Bureau of Land Management.

Dr. Patty Jo Watson

Dr. Patty Jo Watson is emeritus professor of anthropology and Edward Mallinckrodt Distinguished University Professor at Washington University, St. Louis. During the early part of her distinguished career in archaeology Watson specialized in Near Eastern prehistory, participating in field projects in Iraq, Iran, and Turkey.

In the 1960s she initiated research in Salts Cave, a portion of the world's longest cave system in Mammoth Cave National Park. This work developed into a long-term research project on agricultural origins in eastern North America.

In the 1970s Watson began an archaeological research program on Archaic period (circa 5500 to 2500 years ago) shell mound sites along the Green River, downstream of Mammoth Cave National Park. She and colleague William Marquardt recently published the results of their findings in Archaeology of the Middle Green River Region, Kentucky (Institute of Archaeology and Paleoenvironmental Studies Monograph 5, University of Florida, 2005). She has directed numerous master's theses and doctoral dissertations on the archaeology of western Kentucky's prehistoric cave and shell mound sites.

Workshop Faculty: Day Two

Michael Ann Williams

Michael Ann Williams is Head of the Department of Folk Studies and Anthropology at Western Kentucky University, where she has taught for 20 years. She is an expert on the folk art and architecture of the Upper South and served as chair of the Kentucky Preservation Review Board for a dozen years. She is the author of three books and twenty articles on folklife and material culture.

Dr. Williams holds a doctoral degree in Folklore and Folklife from the University of Pennsylvania. She worked as an architectural historian and as a public folklorist in western North Carolina before moving to Kentucky.

For the past two decades, Dr. Williams has worked on many collaborative programs with Mammoth Cave National Park, including documenting the many cemeteries within park. Recently she has worked on preserving the federal style Gardner House, located on the Upper Green River Biological Preserve, near the Park.

William Lynwood Montell

William Lynwood Montell received his B.A. degree in history, geography, and Spanish at Western Kentucky University in 1960, and the M. A. and Ph. D. degrees (folklore, social and cultural history, and cultural geography) from Indiana University in 1963 and 1964. Subsequently, he taught and held administrative offices at Campbellsville College (1963-69) and Western Kentucky University (1969-99). He also taught as visiting professor at the University of Notre Dame and UCLA.

Montell has written nineteen books across the years, all of which focus on local life and culture, thanks to his utilization of oral history methodology. Montell has contributed chapters published in a half-dozen other books (including one each in England and Germany), and has written numerous scholarly journal articles published in the United States, England, Germany, and Sweden. He has conducted numerous oral history workshops and folklife seminars for historical societies, libraries, colleges and universities, the American Association for State and Local History, and for African American and Jewish historic groups. He has served as history, folklore, and humanities consultant to federal, state, and regional institutions and agencies, private museums, and living history programs.

Emeritus professor of folk studies, Western Kentucky University Dr. Motell is also an instructor for day 5.

Workshop Faculty: Day Three

Michael Crutcher

Michael Crutcher is an Assistant Professor of Geography at the University of Kentucky. He is an urban cultural geographer interested in the U.S. South and the African American experience. Specific research interests include the privatization of public space, gentrification, urban cultural traditions and heritage tourism. Michael has recently broadened his interests to include questions of both Southern and Black identity, and how each is negotiated and articulated through spatial processes. He received both his master's and Ph.D. degrees from Louisiana State University.

J. Mark Lowe

Mark Lowe is a professional genealogist, author and lecturer and a native of Robertson County, Tennessee. While Mark presents workshops all over the country, he specializes in Kentucky and Tennessee resources. As a national and regional speaker, he uses his unique humor and southern style to share his love of cultural history and genealogy with diverse audiences. Mark presents his research techniques against the broader background of local and national history and geography, bringing ancestors and their land into context.

Mark's most requested presentations deal with African American genealogy, ancestors in the military, using land grants and maps, searching for transient ancestors and genealogy for beginners. He uses case studies to demonstrate his favorite and most often used research techniques. Mark currently serves as Director of the Chamber of Commerce in Springfield, Tennessee, and still managed to be the most requested certified genealogy lecturer in the United States in 2005.

Workshop Faculty: Day Four

Katie Algeo

Katie Algeo is an Associate Professor of Geography at Western Kentucky University. She is a cultural geographer with primary research interests in the historical geography of tourism in the Mammoth Cave region, cultural identity and the contributions of print and film media to the expression and formation of regional and ethnic identities, and agricultural development in the South. In addition to teaching cultural geography and research methods courses at WKU, Katie also teaches Geographic Information Systems, drawing on her undergraduate degree in computer science and mathematics from Duke University and six years as a professional software developer. Katie received her Ph.D. in Geography from Louisiana State University, and prior to her appointment at WKU, she taught at the University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point for four years

John Jakle

John Jakle is emeritus Professor of Geography and Landscape Architecture at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. His interests encompass urban, historical, and cultural geography, with a specific focus on changing urban and rural landscapes. He has written and co-authored numerous books on the evolving built environment, including The Gas Station in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994), The Motel in America (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996), Fast Food: Roadside Restaurants in the Automobile Age (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), and Common Houses in America's Small Towns: The Atlantic Seaboard to the Mississippi Valley (University of Georgia Press, 1989). He has also published extensively on the history of travel and tourism, including Images of the Ohio Valley: A Historical Geography of Travel, 1740 to 1860 (Oxford University Press, 1977) and The Tourist: Travel in Twentieth-century North America (University of Nebraska Press, 1985). John has also served as a historic preservation planning consultant and chaired the University of Illinois' Architecture Design Review Committee and its Historic Sites Committee.

Workshop Faculty: Day Five

Bob Ward

Bob Ward is the Cultural Resource Management Specialist and Deputy Chief of Science and Resources Management for Mammoth Cave National Park. He has 26 years of service in the National Park Service, having worked in three National Park Service areas: Jean Lafitte National Historic Park in New Orleans, Louisiana; Stones River National Battlefield in Murfreesboro, Tennessee; and Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky. Bob received his Bachelor of Science Degree from Tennessee Technological University in Cookeville, Tennessee in 1979. In his current capacity Bob provides professional cultural resource management guidance to park management to help preserve more than 1,000 archeological sites, 28 National Register listed Historic Structures, over 100 cemeteries, and more than 500,000 museum items.

Bruce Noble

Bruce Noble serves as superintendent at Colorado National Monument. During his 20 year National Park Service career, he has also served at Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Alaska, Harpers Ferry National Historical Park in West Virginia, and in the Washington, DC headquarters office. During his time in DC, he coordinated a cooperative cultural resource management project at Mammoth Cave National Park and co-authored the park's Historic Resource Study. He has a B.A. in American Studies and an M.A. in history from the University of Wyoming and has written widely on a variety of historical topics with published work appearing in the Annals of Wyoming, Colorado Heritage, The Public Historian, and Environmental History. He has also contributed a chapter on historical park management to the book Public History: Essays from the Field, edited by James B. Gardner and Peter S. LaPaglia (Malabar, FL: Krieger Publishing Company, 1999).