Joel Migdal has been hitting the ball out of the park for some time now, judging by the gratitude of loads of current and former students, some of whom have become academic colleagues. He is this year's winner of the Marsha L. Landolt Distinguished Graduate Mentor Award.

The award is to recognize faculty who have made outstanding contributions to the education and guidance of graduate students. But international studies professor Migdal says he is equally committed to undergrads.

"There are a lot of different things motivating me, but it all starts with trying to train people to be undergraduate teachers," said Migdal.

"I'd never give up undergraduate teaching," he added. He said he encourages his professional-school colleagues at the law school and elsewhere to find a way to teach undergrads, maintaining that those who don't deprive themselves of a "true university experience."

But it's also clear that Migdal derives joy from working with graduate students and watching their transformation into colleagues.

"They're studying the most interesting things in the world," he said, ranging from one grad student who followed the "biggest women's mobilization in the history of the world — the Great Leap Forward in China" to another who's studying "honor killings where daughters and sisters are killed by their fathers and brothers — and what governments do or don't do about this."

Migdal's students say they are deeply grateful for the chance to have worked with him.

For example, Mary Alice Haddad, a former student who now is an assistant professor of government and East Asian studies at Wesleyan University, closed her Landolt Award nominating letter by alluding to a Japanese tradition.

In Japan, a culture that reveres teachers, the word deshi refers to a "student of a particular teacher" and is a concept that lasts for your entire life, she wrote.

"People in (Japanese) society and in the academy often discuss the deshi of a particular sensei (teacher)," Haddad said, as in, ‘so-and-so's deshi are doing very well.'

"I wish that we had this word in English. I could not imagine a greater honor than to be known as Migdal-deshi as I advance in my academic career," she wrote.

Another former student, Lauren Basson, now an assistant professor in the department of politics and government at Ben Gurion University in Israel, borrowed from another culture to get a similar point across.

"Joel is more than a mentor," Basson wrote. "Joel Migdal is a mensch," a Yiddish word referring to the kind of guy you can always count on.

Migdal, a New Jersey native, admits to being a great baseball fan who grew up rooting for the Yankees, "probably in rebellion against my family, who were all Brooklyn Dodgers fans."

Those were the days when the Yankees never lost. When he moved to Seattle, Migdal adopted the fledgling Mariners. "I saw it as penance for all those years of (Yankees') success…I thought this is just wonderful — this is the worst team in baseball and I can really be a fan."

As for the Landolt Award, Migdal said it's important for the honor to also reflect his students' accomplishments. To that end, he has helped organize a two-day event next February, when more than 30 former and current students are expected to gather on campus to present papers to highlight what they've done.

The event is getting financial support from the Graduate School, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Jackson School of International Studies and possibly other donors, Migdal said. He said he hopes it will become an annual tradition for future winners, and represent "a way to go beyond the (awards) ceremony on June 8."

"What is a mentoring award?" Midgal asked rhetorically. "It means you helped shepherd a bunch of people to do really great things.

"So we're going to bring those people who did the great things here, and sort of give that dimension of the award — the students, highlighting them rather than this focus on me standing up there and accepting the award as if they didn't exist."