CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga (UTC) has announced that the Raccoon Mountain Caverns are now officially part of the university’s property, providing students and faculty with unique educational opportunities.
Kim White, Vice Chancellor for Advancement and Executive Director of the UC Foundation, emphasized the uniqueness of the caverns.
There’s lots of things that you can only find in the cave, nowhere else in the world,” White said.
She noted that the 5 acres of underground caverns offer a wide variety of educational opportunities, many of which remain unexplored.
Dr. Steven Perlaky, a Chattanooga area emergency medicine physician, owned the caverns for 30 years.
White said, “He talked about the importance of research and how our faculty and students had been using it over the years.”
The caverns, located just a few minutes west of Chattanooga, will now provide educational experiences for students across various majors. “Biology, geology, environmental science. We even think that we can do things with maybe engineering,” White said.
Students will have the chance to study the environmental makeup and history of the area. “They look at soil samples and look at things like pollution. Is there pollution? They also, there’s a very one of a kind spider that they found in the cave. So they can look for, you know, what is living back in the back in the cave,” White explained…