Early Van Hise joined the faculty of the university immediately after graduating, as an instructor in
chemistry and
metallurgy (1879–1883). He then proceeded through the academic ranks as an assistant professor of metallurgy (1886–1888), professor of
mineralogy and
petrography (1888–1892), professor of Archaean and applied geology (1890–1892), and professor of geology (after 1892). Within this time period, he also taught at the
University of Chicago as a nonresident professor of
structural geology and metamorphic geology. Upon joining the college faculty in 1879, Van Hise began collaborating with his former geology professor, Roland Irving, on a study of the
Pre-Cambrian rock of northern Wisconsin. In 1882, he and Irving began a geological study of the
Lake Superior region under the auspices of the
United States Geological Survey, which Van Hise continued on his own after Irving's death in 1888. Four years later, he completed and presented reports to the USGS in seven volumes which served as Van Hise's doctoral dissertation. He was instrumental in the formation of the
University of Wisconsin-Extension division. During his tenure, UW's medical college was established, the number of faculty doubled and the university's revenue increased fourfold. Van Hise supported
eugenics laws, and promoted
eugenic thought by founding the University of Wisconsin School of Criminology, stating: "We know enough about eugenics so that if that knowledge were applied, the defective classes would disappear within a generation." Writing in
After Seven Years, his 1939 account of his role as an advisor to President
Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Raymond Moley credited Van Hise with the underlying philosophy of the New Deal's
National Industrial Recovery Act, stating: "The source of that philosophy, as I've suggested earlier, was Van Hise's
Concentration and Control, and it was endlessly discussed, from every angle, during the 'brain trust' days. In several of his campaign speeches F.D.R. had touched upon the idea of substituting, for the futile attempt to control the abuses of anarchic private economic power, by smashing it to bits, a policy of cooperative business-government planning to combat the instability of economic operations and the insecurity of livelihood. The beliefs that economic bigness was here to stay; that the problem of government was to enable the whole people to enjoy the benefits of mass production and distribution (economy and security); and that it was the duty of government to devise, with business, the means of social and individual adjustment to the facts of the industrial age—these were the heart and soul of the New Deal…. And if ever a man seemed to embrace this philosophy wholeheartedly, that man was Franklin Roosevelt." [p. 184] Van Hise worked as a consulting geologist for the
United States Geological Survey from 1909 to 1918 and published several works for them. He was the principal investigator for a team that investigated the possibility of controlling landslides adjacent to the Panama Canal. He served as the president of the
Geological Society of America in 1907, the
National Association of State Universities, the
National Academy of Sciences, the
American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1916, and the
International Geological Congress in
Stockholm, Sweden. ==Awards and honors==