Following a national search, Shawn Benner has been selected as the associate dean of the College of Innovation and Design.
Benner has been a faculty member in Boise State’s Department of Geosciences for 15 years, during which time he taught and conducted research in the environmental sciences with an emphasis on water and climate change-related topics. His favorite class over the last decade has been Water in the West, a sophomore core survey course for geoscience majors. Benner and his graduate students have published more than 50 peer-reviewed articles, including in the journals Nature and Nature Geosciences. He is most proud of the success of his former graduate students, many of whom now hold prominent positions in the public and private sector, managing and protecting our water resources here in Idaho and across the region.
Since 2010, Benner has been the Boise State director of the Idaho NSF Established Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (EPSCoR) program, which strives to build Boise State’s research competitiveness by supporting strategic initiatives in research, education and diversity across campus. In 2014, Benner Shawn co-founded the Human-Environment Systems program with Nancy Glenn, of which he remains the director.
Benner received degrees from Colorado College, the University of Montana and the University of Waterloo. He completed post-doctoral work at Stanford University and spent two years at the Desert Research Institute in Nevada before joining Boise State.