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UAF photo by Eric Engman.
John Davies visits the Arctic Research Park on the Fairbanks campus in April 2026. As a seismologist, he worked and studied for many years at the Geophysical Institute, located in the Elvey Building (with the blue satellite dish).

By Sam Bishop

John Davies ’70, ’75 recognizes that his passion for public service and policy runs deeper than normal. The former university regent and borough assembly member spent a decade representing Fairbanks in the Alaska House.

“I mean, an example of how crazy I was, when I was in the Legislature, I used to listen to the Juneau borough assembly meetings on the radio,” he recalled in a recent interview at his home in the hills north of Fairbanks.

That fascination with public issues led to a decades-long record of service in Alaska. The UAF Alumni Association gave Davies its Distinguished Alumnus Award this year in recognition of that record.

“With regard to his service to the University of Alaska, I know of no other person who has poured his heart into supporting UA as John has done,” wrote Sarah Campbell ’81, who nominated Davies for the award.

Davies’ lengthy affiliation with the university is matched by few in the institution’s history.

“It's been pretty much my life since I came here in 1967,” he said.

That was the summer of the great Fairbanks flood. Davies was caught in the rising waters at a solar radiation research site near Mile 25 Chena Hot Springs Road, where he used a front-end loader to rescue a co-worker.

“The water was over the tires,” Davies recalled.

The experience didn’t sour him on Alaska, though. He’d come from the Pacific Northwest to study geophysics at the university and climb mountains, and that’s what he did for the next several years.

While starting a family with his first wife, Davies received a master’s in 1970. Just before earning his doctorate in 1975, Davies took a research position at Columbia University.

Six years later, he and his second wife and children returned to Alaska, where he joined the state Department of Natural Resources as a geophysicist. In 1986, he was named state seismologist, a joint faculty position with the UAF Geophysical Institute.

Getting things done

Shortly thereafter, Davies’ interest in public service turned to elective office.

He had built a house in Goldstream Valley with a view of Ester Dome, which some Fairbanks North Star Borough Assembly members wanted to rezone to favor mining.

Davies and others advocated a compromise. The compromise was defeated but so was the entire rezone.

“It was kind of a very dramatic lesson to me about the power of one vote on the assembly,” Davies said. He ran for an assembly seat in 1989 and won.

In 1992, several local Alaska House members said they weren’t running again, so Davies decided to seek a legislative seat. He won a solidly Democratic district in Goldstream Valley and spent the next 10 years in the House minority caucus.

Davies said he was able to accomplish things by working across the aisle.

“I figured out a lot of it is social relations,” he said. “I drank a lot of beer with Eldon Mulder, watching basketball games.”

Mulder was a prominent Republican legislator from Anchorage. Their off-the-court relationship grew from a general attitude Davies found exemplified in a specific legislative floor debate tradition.

“You address the speaker,” Davies said, “and I think that’s an underappreciated facet of the way the process works, because it really tends to move you in that direction of trying to not be personal about your arguments.”

The approach benefited not only his legislative advocacy but also was personally satisfying on at least one occasion.

In 1993, Davies married the poet and teacher Linda Schandelmeier. She received a presidential teaching award in 2000 recognizing her as the best elementary school science teacher from Alaska. The award came with a trip to Washington, D.C., to be honored by the president and the National Science Foundation.

But, in the House, Davies was the top Democratic negotiator on the state budget, which was being finalized at the same time. Mulder, the top Republican negotiator, promised nothing of substance would happen during the four days he was gone, Davies said.

“There's a certain amount of ‘honor among thieves,’ and so I went, and he was true to his word,” Davies said.

Davies sought an Alaska Senate seat in 2002 but was defeated by Fairbanks car dealer Ralph Seekins. Davies was shocked by the loss, which he credited to a large last-minute infusion of money from Republican donors.

“So, I was pretty discouraged for a while,” he said. “We had a poll that I was up by 16 points or something like that.”

Overlapping service

Davies stayed out of politics for eight years and went to work for the Cold Climate Housing Research Center in Fairbanks, analyzing housing and energy policies. He also served several terms on the UAF Alumni Association board, helping to restructure its bylaws and relationship with the university.

But in 2011 Davies was re-elected to the borough assembly. There, he helped establish the borough’s recycling center, an unfinished goal from his first term when he’d worked to create the borough’s transfer station system for solid waste.

Then, in 2014, Davies sought an eight-year seat on the University of Alaska Board of Regents, and Gov. Bill Walker appointed him.

When in Fairbanks, the regents would meet all day Thursday, and Davies would sometimes need to attend the borough assembly meeting that night. He’d be back at the regents meeting on Friday morning.

“That overlap could be strenuous,” he said. “I remember that as being a pretty long period of time.”

The work was also difficult. During the year Davies served as chair of the Board of Regents, Gov. Mike Dunleavy proposed to cut $140 million from the UA budget in one year.

“Our finance officer informed us that if that happened, the university would be out of money in February,” Davies said. “I mean like zero, nothing left to pay anybody.”

“But we rallied the troops, and a number of the Republicans here in Fairbanks helped make the case to Dunleavy,” Davies said. “We were able to convince him to drop that from $140 million in one year to $70 million over three years. We could manage that.”

A great education

Sitting next to Davies during his final two years as a regent was his political opponent from 15 years earlier, Ralph Seekins, a Dunleavy appointee.

“Actually, he and I got along quite well,” Davies said.

“You know, as citizens, we have an obligation to work together and try to make things better for everybody,” Davies said. “So it's kind of corny, but that's what motivates me.”

“The other thing, though, I have to say, is that I just find it really interesting,” he said. “I'm just fascinated by the public process.”

Serving in the various offices slaked that thirst, he said.

“It was a great education,” Davies said. “It was an opportunity to learn things and do things that you wouldn't know otherwise or couldn't really understand.”

Sam Bishop is a writer and editor for UAF Advancement.