Bill Davis received his Ph.D. from  Purdue University in 1965 and joined the Douglass Biology faculty in that same year as an assistant professor. Bill's research interests were in the embryonic development of ferns and seed plants and he published a number of single author papers in the American Journal of Botany on those subjects. Although Bill's interests were closely linked to plant biology, his passion was teaching, and he was, without a doubt, a master teacher. He loved learning new things and worked constantly on developing new ways to explain them. Bill taught General Biology and a course in plant biology every year during his Douglass College years from 1965 -1982. While at Douglass he also developed and taught for a number of years a course on laboratory instrumentation. That course was full of teaching innovations and clever problems that illustrated how instruments worked while demonstrating the pitfalls of blindly accepting the output data. Bill always wanted students to understand the fundamental processes of laboratory research so they could critically analyze and interpret their experiments. Many of the students he trained have become leading scientists and physicians.

After the consolidation of the life sciences in 1984, Bill began to change his research focus to pursue his long standing interest in the process of learning.  He established collaborations with faculty in the Graduate School of Education, and was an active contributor to the Graduate School’s Teaching Assistant Project.  He taught General Biology 101 at Douglass and for the  Summer School (and wrote the lab manual), and also  taught courses in plant biology. In addition, Bill trained hundreds of teaching assistants through the General Biology program’s  Teaching Assistant Project.

Bill's lectures and his personal contacts in the teaching laboratory conveyed a deep concern for the welfare of his students. Always approachable, he would pass on to them a passion for science and critical thinking wrapped with a gentle sense of humor that made him a beloved mentor. In the course of his 39 years at Rutgers Bill's teaching touched more than 15,000 students, leaving a legacy of an excitement for teaching, learning and understanding that will span generations to come.

Bill's love and care for his students was also evident in his activities outside the classroom. He was an advisor to numerous student organizations in the life sciences and was active in the Rutgers Campus Ministries.