Richard D. Dayvault Endowed Memorial Scholarship
Richard D. “Dick” Dayvault
Family and Friends choose to support CMU Geosciences Department to honor the memory of Dick. Initial funding for The Scholarship endowment was from Jalena Dayvault, wife to Richard, and an additional gift from Manuel and April VanCamp Gil, PhD.
Dick first became interested in minerals at the age of 7 when he found a specimen of bright green epidote in his neighborhood in Concord, North Carolina (near Charlotte). He didn’t know what it was, but he soon learned. This discovery spawned a life-long passion in earth science that never abated and eventually he earned B.S. and M.S. degrees in geology from East Carolina University in Greenville, North Carolina. Dick took a job supporting the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) in 1979 and moved to Grand Junction, Colorado. He remained in Grand Junction performing various jobs for the DOE as a professional geoscientist. His work included the study of uranium deposits in volcanic environments, petrographic studies of tight gas sandstones, environmental restoration of uranium mill tailings sites, and bioremediation of metals including uranium. He was a member of the Grand Junction Geological Society, Sigma Xi, the Friends of Mineralogy, and the Grand Junction Gem and Mineral Club. He was chosen as the 2003 Rocky Mountain Federation’s Honorary Award winner for the American Federation of Mineralogical Societies Scholarship Foundation. Dick’s leadership and teaching through the GJ Gem and Mineral Club and the John D. McConnell Math and Science Center are legendary and enduring.
Dick was a registered professional geologist in the state of Wyoming and contributed articles to a number of geologic guidebooks produced by the Grand Junction Geological Society. He was a consulting editor to Rocks & Minerals magazine from 1976-2015 and contributed numerous articles to that magazine. Although he collected minerals and fossils, his main interest in later years was the petrifaction of fossil wood and formation of limb casts. In 1998, he contributed to the book Petrified Wood: The World of Fossilized Wood, Ferns, Cones, and Cycads and, in 2006, coauthored Ancient Forests: A Closer Look at Fossil Wood, and “Palaeobiodiversity of conifer seed cones in the Upper Jurassic Morrison Formation of Utah, USA”, an article published in the German scientific journal, Paleobiodiversity and Paleoenvironments in 2014.
His positive contributions to our world are innumerable; he inspired countless people of all ages with his boundless enthusiasm and knowledge of geology, paleontology, and classical music.