Heather Almquist, Ph.D is an associate researcher in the College of Arts and Sciences and a faculty affiliate in the Department of Geography at The University of Montana. She is a Quaternary geologist with over 25 years of research, teaching, and administrative experience, and formerly served as Associate Vice President for Research at the University of Maine and co-Director of the Maine NSF EPSCoR program. She served as PI for the NSF-ITEST Paleo Exploration Project, which provided professional development to K-12 teachers in the application of geospatial technology to geological research, and currently leads the NSF-DR K-12 Cyber-Enabled Earth Exploration project, which is developing learning materials in earth science for middle school classrooms.