When Paul Bierman received the Young Scientist Award from the Geological Society of America (GSA) in October, more than half of his acceptance speech was devoted to acknowledging his UW graduate advisor and mentor, Alan Gillespie. Bierman, now a professor at the University of Vermont, received his Ph.D. from the UW in 1993.

Why the focus on Gillespie? "It is absolutely crucial in any student's success to have good mentoring," explains Bierman. "Alan was a great mentor. His style was one of constant questioning. Whenever I'd come to his office with a paper or idea, I'd be pummeled with questions about why or how I came to my conclusions. It wasn't meant as an attack; he was simply testing my ideas and making me think harder about them."

Clearly the approach worked. Bierman's geology colleagues awarded him the prestigious Young Scientist Award, also known as the Donath Medal, just three years out of graduate school. The award is presented in recognition of "outstanding achievement in contributing to geologic knowledge through original research that marks a major advance in the earth sciences."

Bierman's scientific contributions focus on the rates and processes by which Earth's surface changes: how long land-forms are stable, how rapidly hillslopes erode, the flux of sediments through basins. His most recognized work, which he began as a UW graduate student, involves a new technique for dating rocks using cosmogenic isotopes-smaller atoms produced when high energy cosmic rays interact with larger atoms, splitting them into fragments.

This research, like most geology research, involves extensive field study. In his acceptance speech, Bierman waxed nostalgic about Gillespie's approach to such trips. "It's dusk, you've been hiking all day over Sierran granite boulders, lunch was a jar of Chileno peppers, you ran out of water two hours ago, and yet, you need to go over that next ridge and see what's there because . . . something always is."

Bierman may regret the lunch of Chileno peppers but clearly relishes the rest if this scenario. "Alan has always been very persistent, but I'm the same way," he says. "This philosophy of persistence and critical thought has served me well. It is undoubtedly the single most important thing that I learned in graduate school and now try to pass on to my students."

Bierman jokes that his persistence "tends to drive my students nuts," but he believes that they will thank him for it later, just as he now thanks Gillespie.

"To do good science, you really must put your heart into things," he says. "I am where I am today because of good advising and because I don't do anything halfway. The successful students I've had have been the same way. They push me and I push them further than either of us thought we could go."

And if his students eventually surpass him in their work? Bierman will be thrilled. "I remember something Alan told me when I left the UW: 'You've done your job right when your students know more than you do and you are comfortable with that.'"

"I hope to train my students to be better and more skeptical scientists than I am," Bierman adds. "Pushing our science farther and challenging existing dogma is the only way we can hope to solve the vexing environmental and resource problems which face us as a global society."