Walter Dodds, a biology professor at Kansas State University in Manhattan, likes to do research and to analyse data, but he likes encouraging his students even more. This year, the university's biology graduate student association presented Dodds with the Outstanding Graduate Faculty award. Among the criteria for this honour were teaching skills, mentorship, the cultivation of learning opportunities, participation in graduate student committees and publication and grants record.

Dodds teaches limnology and aquatic and microbial ecology, sciences that arouse his enthusiasm in the classroom and on field trips to nearby streams in the Konza Prairie. His contagious zeal makes learning come naturally.

Dodds says his goals are to “nurture a love for scientific research”, and “make students successful in their career paths”. Students find this fosters a passionate and professional attitude towards their work. As well as serving on almost every committee of students whose research relates to aquatic ecology, Dodds recently worked with other faculty members to create a course on professional skills in biology — a core requirement for incoming graduate students.

“His door is always open for us,” says one of the many students who wrote in to support Dodds's nomination, adding that he “keeps in touch with his past students, meeting up for dinner at conferences”.

Other supporters note that Dodds is always eager to work on field trips and lab demonstrations — even in cleaning up — and that he strives to end all his graduate courses with a publication that lists all students as authors. Quick to stem the tide of self-doubt that engulfs all graduate students at some point, he is understanding and flexible towards their family lives. During hours off, he invites students to the pub, or to enjoy his harmonica-playing in the locally renowned Red State Blues Band.

Dodds's professional accolades are impressive. His research has so far secured several million dollars in extramural support for the university, and his long list of publications documents a robust career of quality science. It was not his career, however, that prompted so many letters of support to the award committee. It was his intangible knack of mentorship, the ability to convey to students the idea that, in fact, they are his finest achievement.