Research Administration

Since July 2019 I've been ISU's Associate Vice-President for Research, helping to foster a campus-wide culture of creative and scholarly research activity.  Our team in the Office for Research provides a variety of services to faculty and staff including seed grants, proposal development and submission, post-award accounting of research expenses, compliance with government and safety guidelines, improving diversity in STEM fields, community outreach, and technology transfer.  We also oversee several Research Centers and Institutes.  Beyond campus, I serve as Associate Director of the Center for Advanced Energy Studies (CAES), which is a consortium of four schools (ISU, BSU, UI, UW) and the Idaho National Laboratory (INL).  CAES has a new Strategic Plan whose focus is build and sustain a research collaboration ecosystem in five energy-related disciplines: nuclear energy, advanced manufacturing, innovative energy systems, energy-water nexus, and cybersecurity.  CAES also occupies a building in Idaho Falls with office and laboratory space available for consortia researchers.

From 2013-2018, I served as the ISU Site Leader for a large research program called MILES (Managing Idaho's Landscapes for Ecosystem Services). Funded by a five-year, $20M grant from NSF through their EPSCoR program, MILES involved 100+ participants at the three Idaho research universities. Faculty, post-docs, staff members, graduate students, and undergraduate students worked collaboratively to study the past, present and future growth of mid-sized cities, especially in relation to ecosystem services such as water supply, water quality, flood control, and recreation. Our interdisciplinary research teams involved ecologists, hydrologists, sociologists, historians, geographers, political scientists, and others in order to better analyze the coupled human and natural systems in this environment. The ISU MILES project is described in more detail here, and the statewide MILES project is described here.

Sabbatical Leave

During the 2018-2019 academic year, I was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Central Asia in Khorog, Tajikistan. In this role I taught science classes, developed curriculum and lab resources for the Earth & Environmental Science program, and studied firsthand the spectacular geology of the Pamir Mountains.

Please visit my blog::: https://rodgdavi.wixsite.com/website

Academic Administration

From 2010-2018, I was Associate Dean in the ISU College of Science & Engineering. Comprising ten different disciplines, CoSE is a vibrant college characterized by quality education and significant research success. In this position, I facilitated the overall growth and improvement of the College on behalf of its 2000 students, 120 faculty, and 40 staff. Activities included student recruitment, advising, and appeals; Department Chair supervision, mentoring, and collaborative management; development and interpretation of college analytics; curriculum reform; implementation of Proactive Advising protocols; and oversight of several college programs.

Geoscience Teaching

Over the past six years, I've occasionally taught Introductory Physical Geology (G1101) with the intent of attracting more Geology majors. And every Summer I direct part of Geology Field Camp, a 5-week intensive course located in central Idaho that teaches students to describe rocks and structures and especially to make geologic maps. Prior to 2012 I taught numerous graduate and undergraduate courses in structural geology and regional tectonics.

Geoscience Research - Structure and Regional Tectonics

I have a wide variety of interests in both brittlely and ductilely deformed rocks, in extensional and contractional systems, and in uplift and subsidence analysis. Some common themes: all research is rooted in field-based data collection such as geologic map making and structural analysis; structural analyses are generally map- and outcrop-scale, not smaller; both tectonic histories and deformation processes are studied with more emphasis on the former; and nearly all projects are completed with the help of other specialists - geochronologists, sedimentologists, petrologists, geomorphologists, or other structural geologists. More specifically, my research interests focused on the following projects.

Structural controls on gold mineralization -

Epithermal and mesothermal mineral deposits involve fracture systems that facilitate fluid circulation and metal deposition.  My students and I have studied several gold deposits to characterize joint and fault geometries in relation to patterns of alteration and mineralization.  Examples include an Eocene diatreme system in central Wyoming, fractured folds in Nome Alaska, a metamorphic core complex in northeastern Washington, and a tilted fault block in northeastern Nevada.  Completing these studies requires high-resolution geologic and alteration mapping combined with high-resolution structural analyses.

Structural evolution of the Eastern Snake River Plain -

This is a late Cenozoic bimodal magmatic province that may mark passage over a continental hot spot. I'm interested in extension of the province by dike injection, in the crustal plumbing of magma, and subsidence of the province through time. Several theses addressed the subsidence history by studying the shoulders of the structural depression. Another thesis focused on the geometry and kinematics of dike injection on the ESRP.  Some geologic mapping, a lot of regional structural analysis, and simple flexural modeling are involved in these studies.

Structural evolution of the northeastern Basin and Range Province -

The style and geometry of the Basin and Range in Idaho is similar to that elsewhere in the western US, but the timing is apparently quite closely tied to magmatism on the adjacent ESRP. Over the years we have worked to quantify the amount of extension throughout Idaho and especially to document the specific age of extension in each basin. Our goal is to determine the space-time pattern of extension, relate extension to nearby tectonism, and ultimately figure out what causes extension to occur. These type of studies involve geologic mapping, study of basin fill, and radiometric dating of volcanic rocks.

Structural evolution of the Cordilleran fold-thrust belt -

The Cretaceous Cordilleran fold-thrust belt in Idaho is called the Sevier thrust belt. Just west of the exposed thrust faults is a fairly broad region - the hinterland - that extends westward to the coeval Idaho batholith. Cretaceous deformation involved minor thrusting and a lot of folding, culminating in mylonitic shear zones along the edge of the batholith. I am interested in quantifying the amount and age of shortening and uplift associated with this tectonic event. Past projects have re-investigated supposed thrust faults (and usually eliminated them), characterized the age and amount of uplift along the edge of the batholith, and discovered map-scale recumbent folds. Another project involved thermochronology of uplifted thrust sheets to document the age and rate of thrusting. These projects generally involve remapping of mountainous country, detailed structural analysis, perhaps igneous/metamorphic petrography and sampling/analysis for age dating.

Former Post-Doctoral Advisees

Former Graduate Advisees and their Current Occupations

Recent Publications

Recent Grants