This NSF-sponsored 3-day workshop is one of a two-part series held in partnership with EREN faculty. Participants will work with NEON nested field plot data collected across seven sites in the eastern US to calculate vegetation species richness and diversity metrics across multiple scales. The field data collection activity will be used to develop a classroom exercise for undergraduate biology and GIS courses. The classroom exercise will include an assessment tool and participants implementing the exercises in fall 2018 classes will generate assessment data to evaluate the use of NEON field data for teaching biodiversity concepts. The synthesized field data calculated as part of this workshop will also be used to infer biodiversity gradients and related to airborne spectral and structural imagery (Workshop II).