John Fox

Nominated by:
Pan Ni

Comments from nominator:
Prof. John Fox helps me build my confidence in research, broadens my view by providing very meaningful, practical commercial projects, teaches me the importance of combine theoretical and practical thinking together to solve real environmental issues. He also provides me considerable freedom to try different things I like at the very beginning of my PhD life. The continuous exploration of new knowledge boundary with him really makes me excited and happy every day as I know I am growing in my research field. Moreover, he helps me to improve my spoken English by providing me opportunities to teach his class, discussing with our project sponsors, attending conferences. Thanks to him, as an international student whose mother language is not English, I can speak English very fluently right now. Moreover, he comforted me when I broke with my girlfriend and suffered the pain. He just kept encouraging me to pursue my dream of becoming a great professor and scientist in the near feature "You will be a great professor Pan!" he always mentions it when we meet. Besides, one day in my spared time, I calculated the money Prof. Fox has spent on my PhD program and realized I would cost him about 50,000 dollars a year to cover my tuition fee and stipends. That is almost even higher than the average salary Americans can have for a year. He did so much for me and my degree. I just want to use this way, nominating him, to thank him.

Mentor comments:
As an academic mentor I view my role as a helper, adviser, and facilitator. My role is to help students reach their goals, while sharing key insights or knowledge as an adviser, and facilitating any connections and opportunities they need.

Helping students through mentorship is a process. Research innately provides both adversity and encouragement. The research journey provides iterative setbacks and small victories, the mentor has the vantage point to witness a student reach their full potential.