Sarna Becker has joined the Biology Department
The biology department welcomes Sarna Becker as a part-time adjunct professor. Becker has recently come back to the States from Quito, Ecuador, where she was teaching at an international school. Becker has interdisciplinary interests in public health and economics, and how policy influences us both personally and on a public health level.
Diverse Background and Intersectional Interests
Becker grew up in Seattle, Washington. Shortly before she was born, her parents made the decision to become Christians. Since then, she has participated in many different denominational faith traditions. From the Reformed Church of America, a Baptist Church, a Catholic school, and a Presbyterian church, Becker has had a diverse experience. “I’ve always been a non-denominational follower of Jesus,” Becker said, “and I think, for me, that really taught me about my faith.”
As an undergrad, Becker entered Stanford University with a track scholarship as a human biology major, a major that led her to become interested in the intersection of public health and the economic challenges of developing countries. Her thesis advisor, Rosamond L. Naylor, was an economist studying the effects of the El Niño Southern Oscillation cycles on crop prices, including how seasonal droughts affect the local people in places like Indonesia. While El Nino’s cycles do not drastically affect us as Midwesterners, but they can cause famine in the Western Pacific.
“When there’s drought, people who depend on rice as their staple crop suffer from lack of production. Lower yield causes the price of rice to rapidly increase, and people starve,” Becker explained. To address this problem, Naylor was creating models with climatologists to try to predict how much rice needed to be imported ahead of time to prevent the skyrocketing prices.
“It was this interdisciplinary approach led me to appreciate how biology – the stuff I was learning – could be practically applied in a way that overlapped with many different disciplines. To see it practiced in the lives of real people was very impactful,” commented Becker.
Sarna Becker with some of her Ecuadorian students hiking up to a refuge above 15,000 feet. They were tracking the differences in atmospheric pressure and taking samples of glacier water to compare its buffering capacity with that of volcanic lake water.
Life-Long Teacher
Becker’s passion as a teacher is evident throughout her career. After her undergraduate work was complete, Becker applied to a master’s program in biological sciences program at Stanford. While there, she worked as a teacher’s assistant for an ethics professor, took another year to finish her masters, and then stayed yet another year as a teaching and research assistant.
During that time, Becker married her husband, Brent. After their second child, they moved to Washington, where Becker taught anatomy and physiology at a local college for five years. She then made the decision with her husband to move to Quito, Ecuador.
“My husband grew up as a missionary kid and we always wanted to give our kids the opportunity to live overseas,” Becker said. “We were at a good junction in terms of life and career.” While there, Becker taught AP Chemistry for high school students and biology at a semester-abroad program for U.S. college and university students.
Becker returned to the States this past June. She is currently working on marketing educational games she has created over the years for her classrooms, as well as preparing to attend medical school at MSU next fall. Presently, she plans on teaching and keeping connections with Calvin College as a faculty member.
Faith and Science
For Becker, life, faith, and science are immensely intertwined. “I think one of my favorite things as a biologist is to consider how science impacts the way that I live my life as a Christian,” Becker said when asked about her journey as a Christian and scientist.
Becker also had some fascinating insights into the philosophical side of biology: “All my science education was from the best atheists in the business, and I appreciated that perspective because that’s what I wanted. I thought, ‘Show me the best you’ve got!.’ From my perspective, after hearing all their best arguments, there were still significant philosophical flaws with the naturalistic approach [to biology]. One of my continuing reservations about naturalistic biology – although I would agree with an evolutionary approach – is that our naturalistic assumptions can improperly shape our biological mechanisms.”
She continued, “If I told you this building was built using only a hammer, a saw, and a wedge, you could give me a mechanism. But I’ve defined the tools and the parameters for you, that this building could only be constructed using a hammer, a saw, and a wedge. As a truth-seeker, you also have to be open to [the possibility that] perhaps there were other tools at your disposal, and that would distinctly change the mechanism by which the building was most likely constructed. And I think, for me, that has been the most interesting question in terms of the big picture, is how do naturalistic assumptions shape our discoveries.”
By Alex Kuipers