Denver Tolliver to Retire as Director of NDSU Transportation Institute

North Dakota State University transportation researcher Denver Tolliver will retire Nov. 5, 2026, closing a career of more than four decades that helped build NDSU into a national center for transportation research. Tolliver has directed the Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute since 2012 and leads the U.S. Department of Transportation’s University Transportation Centers program for federal Region 8, a consortium of 11 universities.

Over his career, Tolliver authored proposals that brought more than $57 million in extramural research funding to NDSU, including grants from the Office of the Secretary of Transportation, the Federal Railroad Administration, the Federal Highway Administration, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the North Dakota departments of transportation and commerce, and private industry. As director, he led a period of significant growth for the institute, whose general fund appropriation rose from $1.9 million to $5.6 million per biennium and which won state support for a county road and bridge asset management system, a transportation data and intelligence laboratory and an expanded freight research and data program.

"Denver Tolliver has spent his career building North Dakota State University into a national leader in transportation research," said Provost Shari Veil. "His work has strengthened the roads, railways and bridges that communities across the region depend on, and his legacy will guide the institute and its students for years to come."

Tolliver joined NDSU in 1980 as a research associate and became associate director of the transportation institute in 2003 before being named director in 2012. Earlier, he served on the research staff at the Center for Environmental Studies at Virginia Tech, where he earned a doctorate in environmental design and planning.

Tolliver authored or co-authored more than 200 research reports and conference papers, including 74 journal articles across 32 peer-reviewed journals. His work spanned freight transportation and logistics, railroad planning and operations, highway and bridge infrastructure, asset management, energy efficiency, and transportation economics and policy, as well as emerging technologies such as autonomous trucks and intelligent transportation systems.

He also shaped interdisciplinary graduate education at NDSU. Tolliver led the creation of an interdisciplinary doctoral program in transportation and logistics spanning five academic departments and a master’s program in transportation and urban systems spanning four colleges, and he directed the transportation and logistics graduate program from 2006 to 2018. His collaboration among 14 universities established the national online Transportation Leadership Graduate Certificate Program, work that was recognized with the Institute of Transportation Engineers’ 2011 Innovation in Transportation Education Award.

Most recently, Tolliver led the creation of the Center for Transformative Infrastructure Preservation and Sustainability, or CTIPS, which NDSU launched in 2023 as the U.S. Department of Transportation’s University Transportation Center for Region 8. Supported by a federal University Transportation Centers grant, the center unites 11 universities to develop technologies that preserve aging roads and bridges, with an emphasis on rural and tribal infrastructure.

"It has been a privilege to spend most of my career at NDSU working with dedicated colleagues, talented students, and valued partners" Tolliver said. "Together, we built programs that advanced transportation research, educated future leaders, and delivered practical solutions to real-world challenges. I leave with deep gratitude for the opportunities I have been given and great confidence in the future of UGPTI."

NDSU will launch a national search for the institute’s next director this fall.

About UGPTI: The Upper Great Plains Transportation Institute was created by the North Dakota Legislature in 1967 to study the transportation challenges facing the region’s agricultural producers and processors. In the decades since, it has grown into a research and education center at NDSU in Fargo that produces applied and advanced research for state, regional and federal agencies and delivers professional training and technical assistance across highway, transit, rail, air and waterway transportation. Today the institute operates on an annual budget of about $10 million and employs 40 people. It is home to the university transportation center for federal Region 8 and NDSU’s graduate programs in transportation and logistics. To learn more about UGPTI, visit https://www.ugpti.org/.