Rate My Professor Walter Dodds

Walter K. Dodds is a University Distinguished Professor and the Edwin G. and Lillian J. Brychta Chair in the Division of Biology at Kansas State University, where he has served on the faculty since 1990. He earned his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Oregon in 1986, with a focus on Aquatic Ecology, and his B.S. in Biology and Chemistry from the University of Denver in 1980, graduating cum laude. Dodds established the Dodds Lab, a freshwater ecology laboratory in 1990, which has mentored over 20 graduate students, 8 postdoctoral researchers, and more than 30 undergraduates. His research specializations include water quality, nutrient cycling with an emphasis on nitrogen, nutrient criteria development, the economic value of water, trophic states of rivers and streams influenced by biotic and abiotic factors, prairie stream ecology, scaling of ecological predictions, broad geographic patterns in aquatic habitats, and valuation of aquatic ecosystem services. As an investigator in the Konza Prairie Long-Term Ecological Research program, he has contributed to long-term studies on tallgrass prairie ecosystems.

Dodds has authored influential works, including the textbook Freshwater Ecology: Concepts and Environmental Applications of Limnology in multiple editions. Notable publications encompass "Eutrophication of US freshwaters: analysis of potential economic damages" (2009), "Control of nitrogen export from watersheds by headwater streams" (2001), "Stream denitrification across biomes and its response to anthropogenic nitrate loading" (2008), and "Nutrients, eutrophication and harmful algal blooms along the freshwater to marine continuum" (2019). He has produced over 160 peer-reviewed publications as of 2017. His research impacts freshwater science by informing nutrient management, eutrophication control, and ecosystem services valuation. Dodds has received major honors, including the 2017 Society for Freshwater Science Award of Excellence, inaugural fellowship of the Society for Freshwater Science, the 2025 Higuchi-KU Endowment Research Achievement Award, and the 2007 Outstanding Graduate Faculty Award from the Kansas State University Biology Graduate Student Association. He holds University Faculty Fellow status and contributes to committee roles and editorial boards.