"It's about trying to help students to seek, discover, to confront the world with wide-eyed wonder." In awarding the Killam prize, Rod Macdonald was hailed by the Killam jury as one of the country's "most influential public intellectuals." Macdonald's main focus is on teaching, and during his six years as McGill's dean of law he made it a rule never to hire anyone who said they'd rather practise law than teach.