Ronald B. Chase

Dr. Ronald Chase received his bachelor’s degree in geology from DePauw University and his master’s and doctoral degrees in geology from the University of Montana. His teaching career began at Marshall University in 1964, followed by the University of Colorado-Pueblo in 1967.

In 1973, Chase began his career at Western Michigan University as an associate professor, after which, in 1980, he became a professor of geosciences. While at UC-Pueblo, Chase received distinguished teacher recognition twice and the Sigma Xi Outstanding Researcher Award for 1972-73. At WMU, Chase won the Alumni Award for Teaching Excellence in 1999. He has been vice-chair and program chair of the North Central Section of the Geological Society of America. Two of his doctoral students were named by the Geological Society of America as top national graduate scholars and three received WMU Dissertation Fellowships.

Areas of Chase's research activity have been igneous/metamorphic petrology, structural geology, and geotechnical analysis. As the theory of plate tectonics evolved during its early days, Chase was a member of and cross-section contributor to the Geological Society of America's Plate Margins Working Group of the International Geodynamic Committee. In retirement, Chase and his wife, Chris, plan to remain in Kalamazoo and travel to visit their children and grandchildren. He will continue his research activities and take classes in favorite subjects other than geology. Chase has had a lifelong love of classical music starting with his playing in the Grand Rapids Symphony while still in high school. He has recently rekindled this interest and has been a member of the Kalamazoo Philharmonia Orchestra for four years.

Recent Publications

• El Kadiri, R., Sultan, M., Youssef, A., Elbayoumi, T., Chase, R., Bujlkhi, and A., Bujlkhi, M.M., 2014, A Remote-Sensing-based approach for debris-flow susceptibility assessment using artificial neural networks and logistic regression modeling, IEEE JSTARS, DOI: 10.1109/JSTARS.2014.2337273.

• Alharbi, T., Sultan, M., Sefry, S., El Kadiri, R., Ahmed, M., Chase, R., Milewski, A., AbuAbdallah, M., Emil, M., Chouinard, K., 2013, An assessment of landslide distribution in the Fifa area, Saudi Arabia, using remote sensing and GIS techniques, Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences Discussion, v.1, pp. 6685-6717.