Annual faculty awards: Don Ronning, PhD

Don Ronning, PhD, is a recipient of the UNMC Faculty Senate’s Outstanding Faculty Mentor of Graduate Students Award.

• Name: Don Ronning, PhD
• Title: Professor, Department of Pharmaceutical Sciences, UNMC College of Pharmacy
• Joined UNMC: January 2020
• Hometown: Fergus Falls, Minnesota

What are the greatest rewards of mentoring graduate students?

Observing the students in that “eureka moment” when they discover something new or see a result that no one has previously seen.

Describe a moment in your career when you realized you had picked the right profession.

We published a paper in 2013 describing our first covalent, allosteric inhibitor of one of our protein targets. This inhibitory strategy was not as common as it is today, and that paper suggested to me that our academic work could have a broad strategic impact on future drug discovery and development.

What are the biggest challenges you face as a mentor?

Identifying mentoring strategies for each unique mentee and knowing when and how to alter those strategies as the mentee matures.

How do you know when you’ve been successful as a mentor?

Student awards and papers always are a spectacular indicator of mentoring success, but I am most satisfied when students take ownership of their projects and start testing new ideas before I suggest them.