Faculty Profile

Featuring: Bill Graves

Current Position: Professor

Hometown: La Grange, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago

Hobbies: I'm addicted to jogging, I read newspapers daily, and I enjoy traveling. The jogging usually is with my border collie; the newspapers mostly are for politics, editorials, and world news; and travel usually is to explore forests, swamps, and mountains for wild populations of trees and shrubs my students and I are studying. Otherwise, I'm embarrassingly one-dimensional; I think about my research and related teaching most of the time. I see movies frequently, which leads to the next topic.

Favorite Movie: I can't say that these are my favorites of all time, but here are some I've seen recently that made me remember them for more than a day:

Favorite Book: Again, I can't say I have a favorite. I love so-called local floras, books that document the vegetation native to a region, especially when maps are included that show precisely where different species occur. Trees of Missouri by Don Kurz and Shrubs of Ontario by James A. Soper and Margaret L. Heimburger are great examples of such references. Also, I've recently read (or re-read) and enjoyed Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck, Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, and In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.

Advice to students: Don't strive to land a job; follow a passion.



Past Faculty Profiles:
     Cynthia Haynes
     Dr. Loren Stephens
     Dr. Gail Nonnecke
     Dr. Nick Christians
     Dr. Ann Marie VanDerZanden
     Dr. Shui-zhang Fei