Highest Honors for a Nationally Recognized Researcher and Mentor

The Ernest Guenther Award in the Chemistry of Natural Products is an elite and coveted award from the American Chemical Society. Recipients include five Nobel Prize laureates and other legendary researchers through the decades — including this year’s honoree, John L. Wood, Ph.D., The Robert A. Welch Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at Baylor and co-director of the Baylor Synthesis and Drug-Lead Discovery Lab.

While honors are meaningful, what Wood finds most rewarding is mentorship and playing a role in the day-to-day transformation that takes place within students. When he discusses his job, his students are just as likely to come up in conversation as the research itself. As Wood works to shape future professionals, he shares five keys to mentorship he’s learned in nearly four decades in higher education:

Learn from failure 

Certainly, my goal is for everyone who leaves my laboratory to be equipped with the skills to look at a molecule, design a synthesis and put it into practice. But, I also want to create an environment where they feel free to fail. Counterintuitively, that helps them thrive, and mentorship means I’m providing an environment in which they can thrive.

Build problem-solvers

Everyone experiences failure, but a good story is one where you eventually overcome it and thereby conquer the unknown. Going through that process leads students to become problem-solvers. What we do is about more than having students finish the project they’ve been working on. It’s about building people who become problem-solvers over and over again because that’s who people want to hire and that’s what this world needs.

Know your students 

I’m in the lab daily, speak with everybody daily, and students eventually become just like an extension of your family. That’s the most enjoyable aspect of the job — being able to constantly develop great relationships with really, really talented people.

Have a hobby 

Each of my lab students must have a hobby. To maintain good mental health, it’s important for the students to step out of the pressures they face and do something that’s gratifying to them. It’s healthy to pursue other interests; you don’t have to do chemistry all the time.

Focus on preparing people

I came to Baylor over a decade ago and we’ve recruited talented students and faculty alongside us, to work in the best facilities of my career at an R1, Christian research institution. But it’s really all about preparing those students and witnessing the transformation that takes place as they begin contributing intellectually to projects and have those ideas come to fruition. The self-confidence and independence that develops leaves me feeling privileged to have been a part of it.