Among his students at Minnesota were Henry J. Oosting, Murray Fife Buell, Rexford F. Daubenmire, Frank Edwin Egler and Arnold M. Schultz; the latter went on to teach "Ecosystemology" at U.C.
Other professional accolades included receipt of the Botanical Society of America's Merit Award in 1956 and the Eminent Ecologist Award from the Ecological Society of America in 1963. Cooper's travels in Glacier Bay, Alaska, compelled him to lead scientists in nominating it as a national park or monument.
He also established the oldest permanent plot network in post-glacial areas in the world in 1916 in the Glacier Bay basin, now maintained by Brian Buma at the University of Colorado.
[2] At the Ecological Society of America's 1922 meeting, Cooper headed a committee that drafted a resolution adopted by the organization and sent to President Calvin Coolidge asking him to name the bay a monument.
The Ecological Society of America recognizes Cooper's work in the discipline by bestowing its annual William Skinner Cooper Award on scientists who produce outstanding publications on geobotany, physiographic ecology, plant succession, or the distribution of plants along environmental gradients.