Faculty award winner: Gloria Borgstahl, Ph.D.

Gloria Borgstahl, Ph.D., will receive the Outstanding Faculty Mentor of Graduate Students Award at the annual faculty meeting on April 20.

• Name: Gloria Borgstahl, Ph.D.
• Title: Professor
• Joined UNMC: 2002
• Hometown: Dubuque, Iowa

With how many graduate students do you work?
I currently have five graduate students that I work closely with at UNMC, and every summer we keep at least one undergraduate student in the lab. I have matriculated seven Ph.D. students (five from UNMC biochemistry & molecular biology and cancer research graduate programs; two from University of Toledo in chemistry) and three master’s in chemistry from Toledo. Two have become professors; one of these is fully promoted and tenured now (see below). Oh, and there were the two from other labs who felt like mine.

What are the greatest rewards of mentoring?
I enjoy having an extended family of students. The greatest rewards are seeing them learn to solve small research problems on their journey to the bigger problems they will solve. It is fantastic when they keep in touch. We have a lot of fantastic discussions and laughs over lunch. I enjoy free access to interlibrary loans while they are with me and then seeing “our babies” get real jobs and contribute to the world.

Describe a moment when you realized your influence made a difference in someone’s career.
When I was at the University of Toledo, I had a student from metropolitan Detroit who transferred to my lab after five years with a mentor who did not receive tenure and was shut down. He completely started over and graduated about five years later. I know he had major personal challenges and victories — for example, homelessness and paying child support. His family was so proud at his commencement ceremony. A few years later he became an assistant professor.

I finally knew I had had a big influence on his career when his chair at the new university sent me a personal thank you card, thanking me for giving him to them. Other favorite mentoring moments include discussions on how to safely put out bench and microwave fires, pleas not to poison themselves with protease inhibitors, phosphatase inhibitors or heavy atom derivatives in the lab, and how to ride a bike up a hill.

List three things few people know about you.

• I have an elderly, purebred long-haired Chihuahua, named by my son before we found him in a newspaper ad, after the dog in the first “Transformers” movie — Mojo.
• In 2015, my husband and I earned our bachelor’s degrees in square dancing.
• I like to ride my bicycle each summer with my family and friends, first across Nebraska in BRAN and then across Iowa in RAGBRAI to my mommy’s house for dinner.