chemistry

Trio of Calvin students earn nation’s most prestigious STEM research award

msk23@calvin.edu — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 11:25:49 +0000

Trio of Calvin students earn nation’s most prestigious STEM research award msk23@calvin.edu Wed, 04/02/2025 - 07:25

Aerin Baker (Saugatuck, Mich.), Maggie Grabill (Ada, Mich.), and Ava Tatko (Grand Rapids, Mich.) have been named 2025 Goldwater Scholars. The scholarship, awarded by the Barry M. Goldwater Foundation, is widely considered to be the most prestigious award for undergraduate students in the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering in the United States.

More than 1,300 students from 445 schools applied for the award, but only 441 students received it. This marks the second straight year that three �鶹�� students earned the distinction.

“To have multiple students most years earning this distinction is a testament to the strength of our students and the strength of our research programs here at Calvin,” said Chris Hartemink, professor of engineering and Calvin’s campus representative for the scholarship.

Personalized research experiences

Common to all three students’ experience is they were invited into research during their first year at Calvin. One thing they discovered was they would have incredible access to their professors and be seen as partners in the research.

“The professors are so intentional about connecting with you as an individual, as a person, and that grows during the research,” said Baker, a junior studying chemistry. “You are working alongside your professor, not under them.”

“Whenever I had advice to give or a research-related question to ask I could walk into my research advisor’s office anytime and sit down and have a conversation,” said Tatko, a junior studying engineering with an energy, environmental and sustainability concentration. “At a larger university, where you have more of an impersonal relationship, that is not an option.”

Impressive outcomes

While the students have felt like partners in the research, their names being listed as co-authors alongside their professors in major journal articles validate that feeling.

“We’ve published four papers and we are working on a fifth now,” said Baker, who also presented her research at the American Chemical Society’s National Meeting in Denver, Colorado this past summer. “My advisor [Professor Doug Vander Griend] and I are also working on a collaboration with a university in France.”

Grabill, a chemical engineering and chemistry double major is only a sophomore, yet she already has two publications to her name.

Maggie Grabill '27 earned the Goldwater Scholarship as a sophomore. Most awardees are juniors.

As for Tatko, she’s already seeing the tangible benefits of her research on a global scale. She’s been working on getting a manuscript published about centralized chlorination for rural communities in the Andean mountains in Ecuador. While she says the water disinfection systems in the U.S. are well proven, they aren’t necessarily available to other countries because of material needs and regulation restrictions.

“So, the engineering department at Calvin is partnering with an engineering and missions organization in Ecuador and we are working with them to do design for specific communities. So, I have been organizing and doing design for 18 different communities over six years of data and organizing that into a formalized paper to get it published to share the design so others can do it for other countries.”

Practical applications

In Spring 2024, Tatko got to travel with her research advisor and two other student researchers to install the design they had created as a prototype in their lab during her first year of summer research.

Ava Tatko (left) in Ecuador with her fellow student researchers and her research advisor, Julie Wildschut (center).

“It was so very interesting to have my research directly applicable. It was novel research, and we then had the opportunity to install it and do ‘real engineering’ and work with the community and make sure they knew how to do maintenance and installation themselves so they could operate it once we had returned to the U.S.,” said Tatko.

Support leads to success

While Baker, Grabill and Tatko realize the research experiences they received at Calvin helped them earn the prestigious Goldwater award, they also credit their professors and advisors who invested countless hours to help their students stand out amongst their peers.

“All the applicants worked closely with Professor Hartemink during the month of January to do essay writing and drafts and reviews and to make sure this application was as polished as it could be,” said Tatko.

“I had been told as a sophomore you’ll put your best foot forward, but know that you can’t be as competitive as the juniors because you only have one year of experience,” said Grabill. “So, I thought I’d be applying next year. But I’m super grateful that despite the odds, Professor Hartemink and other professors at Calvin had enough confidence in me to take the time to write letters of recommendation.”

“I think Calvin provided me a lot of support to win the Goldwater,” said Tatko. “My application wouldn’t have been as strong without Chris Hartemink’s and Julie Wildschut’s, my research advisor, guidance and support throughout the process.”

Made the right decision

While the three still have time to decide their next step after Calvin, one thing they all agree on: they made the right choice in coming to Calvin.

“100%! I thought my idea of research was pretty solid coming in, but as I’ve gone through Calvin, it’s a lot deeper than I originally thought. You get to connect with so many people, collaborate not just in your own lab, but across departments and with people from other schools who have knowledge of what you are working on,” said Baker. “Calvin is a great place in the research community and a lot of great opportunities come out of that.”

“I don’t think I’d be where I am if I wasn’t at Calvin. I think it’s been a really great experience,” said Grabill.

“The longer I’m at Calvin the more grateful I am that I chose to come here,” said Tatko. “It’s really worked out for me in every sense I wanted.”

Interested in learning more about Calvin and the opportunities available to you? Get started.

Wed, 04/02/2025 - 12:00

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Heading to NASA to Become a Better Teacher

msk23@calvin.edu — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 11:58:47 +0000

Heading to NASA to Become a Better Teacher msk23@calvin.edu Wed, 09/18/2024 - 07:58

For the past 24 years, the latter 15 at Calvin, Herb Fynewever’s primary role has been teaching. But, this fall, the chemistry professor is on a different mission—going beyond his usual surroundings on a journey of discovery.

“I love teaching at Calvin. I love teaching first-year students, and I get a lot of energy from those students,” said Fynewever. “I know you can get into a rut even when you’re doing something you love. It’s great to get out and do something different, learn something new, and breathe new life into your passions, so I’m grateful to Calvin for letting me do that.

Exploring New Terrain

Fynewever was selected as an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow for NASA in Washington, D.C. As part of his fellowship, he’ll be tasked with writing the next strategic plan for The Global Learning and Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Program.

As a scientist, what excites Fynewever most is understanding the interaction between science and government.

“I’ve been really curious about this interaction between science and government, and I have a deep personal interest in policy,” said Fynewever. “If we don’t have an educated public and policymakers, then even if we get the science right, we don’t necessarily get policies that align with the evidence of science. I really wanted to get a job in the government temporarily so that I could understand a bit more of how it all works.”

Deepening His Understanding

While Fynewever is taking on the posture of a student this year, he’s most excited about how he can take what he’s learning and directly apply it when he returns to his teaching role next year.

“I can read about it in the newspaper and listen to congressional hearings,” said Fynewever, “but actually being in D.C. for a year and meeting with people who work in the government, getting to know them, meeting scientists who work in the government, seeing how it all fits together, that will help me when teaching my classes about these issues.”

Fynewever can see it being especially helpful in his “Chemistry and Public Policy” and his “Science and Society” courses.

“In my chemistry and public policy course, for example, I have students read primary literature in science and legislation and I have them watch congressional hearings, among other things, but it’ll be so much better when I can say to them, ‘when I was in D.C. this is how I saw this working.’”

Enhancing the Learning Environment

For Fynewever, it’s all about providing his students with a greater depth of learning, so that they can be the best possible citizens.

“We need an interdisciplinary approach to advance the kingdom. From Scripture, we are all given different gifts and to follow our vocation is to be faithful to the gifting that we have,” said Fynewever. “So, some of us are gifted to be scientists, to know how to collect evidence from general revelation, to learn about God’s creation. But that evidence only gets you so far. You then need to think about what we do with the evidence, that’s where I feel policymakers have an important role to play. They then take that evidence and use their gifts to determine what the appropriate, data-informed policy is. And now, what shall we do as Christians, what shall we do as humans to care for creation given what scientists have told us about it?”

Prepared to Succeed, Preparing Others to do the Same

While Fynewever’s experience is sure to benefit his future students, the fact he was selected to write the strategic plan for this major government outfit also speaks volumes to the benefit of a Calvin education.

“I think part of what’s contributed to my success is when I was taking classes at Calvin I spent a lot of time in the core curriculum learning how to write, how to discern, taking philosophy and history classes. But even in my science classes, writing well was a requirement and part of the curriculum was writing formal lab reports and getting lots of feedback,” said Fynewever. “At larger state universities, it’s just not possible to have that kind of hands-on training in technical writing, because it’s so labor intensive and when you don’t have the liberal arts values, core curriculum, small student-to-professor ratio, there’s no way to get the detailed feedback that I did as a student at Calvin.”

And Fynewever said that foundational work has allowed him to build up a competitive resume’ that is full of publications, a number of which he has co-authored with his Calvin students.

“I think part of what gave me a leg up for this position is my publication track record and seeing it’s in science education and I’m active in contributing to the literature,” said Fynewever. “They probably thought, oh he knows how to write, how to synthesize data, so this would be a good person to take data from all the stakeholders and come up with a plan to go with this data.”

And those are skills he learned at Calvin and ones he is excited to continue to impart when he returns from his latest mission.

“This is a new opportunity to learn, so I can come back re-energized with fresh insights,” said Fynewever.

Wed, 09/18/2024 - 12:00

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Discovering a World of Opportunity Just a Few Miles Away

msk23@calvin.edu — Wed, 11 Sep 2024 12:11:56 +0000

Discovering a World of Opportunity Just a Few Miles Away msk23@calvin.edu Wed, 09/11/2024 - 08:11

When Hannah King was looking at colleges, she knew where she wasn’t going. Or so, she thought.

“I wasn’t thinking Calvin at first,” said King, who graduated from Grand Rapids Christian High School.

King, whose high school sits just three miles down the road from �鶹��, felt it was just too close. With an interest in the sciences, she also had a negative perception about Christian schools compared to public research institutes.

“I was worried about the rigor…that I wouldn’t be able to go as in-depth into chemistry and the sciences,” said King. “I think it was a deep-rooted hesitancy.”

Changing her mind

But this hesitancy was ultimately uprooted when she realized the bottom line. “Calvin was significantly more affordable than the other schools I got accepted to,” said King.

So, King decided to enroll at Calvin and soon discovered that her perceptions of Calvin didn’t match reality.

“It’s been great, a lot better than I could have ever imagined,” said King. “The coursework is challenging—all of it. It’s very in depth. And my profs are respected and established in their fields.”

Finding opportunities right away

At Calvin, King found research opportunities right out of the gate.

“[After my] first year of college, I applied to Calvin’s institutional research program, and I was so surprised I got in,” said King.

She spent the first two summers at Calvin doing research alongside Professor Laura Westrate, which prepared her to compete for competitive internships across the country following her junior year.

Working with Calvin’s Career Center, King applied for multiple internships and was accepted into four of them. Ultimately, she decided to take the internship with Ginkgo Bioworks, a biotech company in Boston, Massachusetts, which came with both moving and housing stipends.

“They are a contract company,” said King. “If Merck or Moderna want something done but don’t have the resources to do it or if it’s cheaper for them to outsource, my company will do that project for them. Because of all the instruments and specialists we have, we can do a lot of projects.

“Big pharma companies in early-stage vaccine development want us to help make vaccine components and test to see what’s in them,” said King. “My job is to see exactly what we are making, and what are the impurities.”

Equipped for success

While King had never done this particular type of chemistry research before, she was drawing heavily on lessons she learned at Calvin—about how through failure you ultimately find success.

“Because I had done research before at Calvin with Calvin profs, I knew that I was not going to be perfect, there would be mistakes, some experiments would fail, and I would have to troubleshoot and try again,” said King. “So, it was helpful to focus on using my mistakes to become better instead of considering it a wasted day. Calvin introduced that mindset [to me]...using my failures for learning.”

King said her colleagues took notice of this skill: “I was complimented on that a lot by my colleagues,” said King. “Other people are starting to realize how well Calvin has equipped me.”

And King is realizing that too.

“I am glad I came here. I feel that Calvin has given me exactly what I was looking for and proved my pre-judgments wrong,” said King.

King, a senior chemistry and French double major, is finishing up her time at Calvin. She’s in the midst of applying to PhD programs.

“I want to keep learning and see where it takes me,” said King.

Wed, 09/11/2024 - 12:00

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