Discovery. It's the essence of scientific experience and the joy that Frank Guziec shares with his students.

"I enjoy getting into the lab with students and showing them how to do science," says the Southwestern University professor of chemistry. "I want to be with them when they make discoveries no one has ever made before."

Being able to work one-on-one with students and staying active in the classroom were very important factors when Guziec decided to accept a position at Southwestern University in 1996, leaving New Mexico State, where he had taught for 15 years. His spouse, Lynn, also now a member of Southwestern's faculty in the chemistry department, encouraged the move.

"We came here to do research with students and provide them with the opportunity to do important work. Some larger institutions have the 'publish or perish' mentality, and the professors are there to do their own research and make money for the school. If I weren't an active scientist, I don't feel I could be an effective teacher."

His work with students has been rewarded with two consecutive prestigious grants from The Welch Foundation in Houston. The three-year grants (1997-2000 and 2000-2003) total more than $250,000 for Guziec's work to synthesize compounds for anti-cancer drugs.

"To get funded once means you have a good idea. To be funded again means you've made good progress toward your goal. We're probably not going to cure cancer at Southwestern, but we can help other scientists move closer to that end. Collaboration is what it's all about."

The Welch Foundation will contribute $25 million over the next three years to fund chemistry research in Texas. "The foundation has attracted many excellent scientists to come to Texas," Guziec says, "and I'm extremely honored to receive a Welch Grant."

Guziec grew up in a Polish neighborhood in northwest Chicago and trained in a Catholic Seminary. He completed his undergraduate work in chemistry at Loyola of Chicago in 1968 and went to MIT for graduate studies.

It was there he first became interested in biologically important molecules through his work with John Sheehan, the first person to synthesize penicillin.

After receiving his doctorate in chemistry in 1972, he went to Imperial College in London as a United Kingdom Research Fellow. There he worked with Nobel Prize winning Chemist Derek Barton. He would eventually return to MIT where he worked with another Nobel Prize winner, Gobind Khorana.

In 1977, he got his first teaching job as an assistant professor in chemistry at Tufts University. Four years later, he went to New Mexico State, where he became a full professor.

"There is a huge difference in teaching at Southwestern versus other institutions where I've taught. The largest SU class would be considered small in comparison. To have eight students in a medicinal chemistry class, a class offered at very few undergraduate institutions, is such an advantage to teaching at a small, liberal arts college."

Guziec regularly travels to local elementary schools with Lynn to perform scientific demonstrations. "I want kids to get turned on to science. Occasionally Lynn and I will be out somewhere and a child will come up to us and say, 'Hey, you're the guys who showed us how hydrogen and oxygen form water!' That's great."

To relax, Guziec regularly runs three miles a day at lunchtime. He's enjoyed running for the last 30+ years, and he completed the 1980 New York Marathon. He explains, "I run to relieve stress. Most students don't realize it, but it's pretty stressful to get up in front of 50 people and discuss your life's work."

-Greg Holland