Bill Ensign (’95 Ph.D. fisheries and wildlife sciences) received the Council on Undergraduate Research Biology Division Mature Career Mentor Award, reserved for scientists with greater than 19 years of experience mentoring undergraduate researchers. Ensign, a biology professor, has been at Kennesaw State University in Georgia since 1997.

The award acknowledged Ensign’s “long-term efforts in supervising undergraduate research students.” The council’s judges recognized that many of Ensign’s students look up to him as an inspiring mentor as well a teacher who pushes them to work with their strengths. Many of his students have presented their work at regional or national conferences. Ensign takes care to help each student understand the course material through open-ended lab activities, class time dealing with novel questions, and field experiences.

“Developing the skills necessary to understand the physical world requires practice,” Ensign said. “I am constantly trying to create opportunities for students to learn how to observe, generalize, and make inferences about systems and structures with which they are not familiar.”

Ensign expressed extreme gratitude at receiving the award and gave thanks to the Virginia Tech faculty members who were his model of dedication to students. “The assistance they provided was tailored to the students’ levels of need and knowledge, and was designed to facilitate progression both as a scientist and as an individual,” he said. “It did not matter if the students were first-year undergraduates or final year Ph.D. candidates; the faculty gave their time, effort, knowledge, and compassion to each of them.”

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