Leslie Steffe, among the foremost mathematics education researchers in the world, has had a profound influence on three generations of researchers. In 2006, he received the first-ever Senior Scholar Award from the AERA Special Interest Group: Research in Mathematics for the excellence and seminal nature of his work. Steffe shares his thoughts about his intellectual growth as a researcher, noting that "I have come to the realization that constituting mathematics education as an academic field entails constructing models of mathematical minds that are constructed by students in the context of mathematics teaching, beginning in early childhood and proceeding onward throughout the years of schooling."