Darwin Day Events @ UT Knoxville

Darwin Day in Knoxville, Tennessee, is a volunteer-run event dedicated to informing the public about evolution and its importance as a unifying concept in all of biology. Our goal is to disseminate factual information, in the context of a non-confrontational and rational discussion based on empirical evidence without pre-conceived ideological agendas or uncritical faith in the opinions of scientists, politicians, or clerics. In a state with past and recent legislative efforts to introduce faith-based ideologies into the science classrooms of public schools, these efforts are particularly important.

We sponsored the first Darwin Day event on February 12th of 1997, the 188th birthday of Charles Robert Darwin. Since this first Darwin Day, the annual celebration has grown to include an annual keynote speaker, a teacher’s workshop, and other events.

For Darwin Day 2016 we are excited to announce the theme of Paleontology. Although, we are in the preliminary planning stages here is a tentative list of events to look forward to:

• Two nights of paleontology related seminars
• Three brown bag (lunch time) talks on Darwin’s many contributions to various scientific fields
• An open panel discussion on evolution
• A birthday party at the McClung Museum
• Fossil and mineral identification day
• A teachers workshop with available lesson plans and guest speaker Dr. Alycia Stigall
• Field trip to the Gray Fossil Site
• Field trip to the Great Smoky Mountain National Park
• Field trip to the Scopes Trial location in Dayton, Tennessee

The Darwin Day events are sponsored by the Central Program Council of UT Knoxville, Dry Dredgers, NIMBioS, and the departments of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, Earth & Planetary Sciences, Anthropology, Plant Sciences, Microbiology, History, Psychology, Mathematics, Theater, Sociology, Geography, Biosystems Engineering & Social Science, Entomology, and the College of Agricultural Sciences.

Find more information on these exciting events here.