Today's Featured Biography

 
Dana Thomas

After high school I went to college at UAF and earned a B.S. in Biology in 1974. While attending college I worked summers for the Alaska Department of Fish and Game in Dillingham, Alaska. I met Kay Ward there and, after a year at college together, we married in 1974. After college, Kay and I worked on the Trans Alaska Pipeline during 1976-77. Then we moved to Corvallis, Oregon where I earned an M.S. and Ph.D. in Statistics at Oregon State University in 1978 and 1982 respectively. We returned to Fairbanks in 1981 when I became a faculty member in the Department of Mathematics and Statistics at UAF; I served as Department Chair for six years. I then served as Vice Provost for UAF for six years. In August 2012 I became Vice President of Academic Affairs for the University of Alaska statewide system. I retired from that position December 31, 2014. When UAF wanted to conduct a search for a new chancellor, I served as interim chancellor from August 2016 to June 2017.

While employed by UAF, my family and I lived two years, 1988-90, in Sana'a, Yemen and two years, 1992-1993, in Muscat, Oman working as a technical advisor for the U.S. Agency for International Development. In Yemen, I helped coordinate the first national survey of agriculture and provided education on the use of statistical software. In Oman, I worked to improve fisheries statistics reporting.

I co-authored the book "Resource Selection by Animals: Statistical design and analysis for field studies," by Bryan Manly, Lyman McDonald, and Dana Thomas published by Chapman and Hall of London in 1993. A second edition of this text was published by Kluwer Academic Publishers in 2002.

Current hobbies include genealogy, harmonica and canoeing; I was an American Canoe Association certified canoe instructor for about a decade. Kay and I now live in the Phoenix area where we are active in a local hiking club.

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