Jennifer J. VanAntwerp

I joined the Calvin faculty in 1999 because my professional passion is undergraduate engineering education. I was new to Christian education at that time, but I have come to deeply appreciate that at Calvin I am able to join with engineering students in discovering how our interests in engineering work fit within a whole life lived in service to God’s kingdom. Since my arrival at Calvin, my husband and I have happily job-shared as chemical engineering professors. This unconventional arrangement has allowed us to each pursue our professions while jointly raising our five children.

I currently have an active research program focused on engineering career pathways, including workforce retention and diversification. Publications have focused on how gender interacts with engineering culture and career outcomes. I work to empower individual engineers to better understand their career options and how to self-advocate. My research also supports culture change within engineering, so that the future engineering workplace will not be limited to the Dilberts, but instead will allow everyone to thrive.

I feel called to the profession of teaching as much as to the profession of engineering. I have published in the areas of curriculum development, engineering student retention, and gender issues in engineering. As a teaching assistant in Chemical Engineering at the University of Illinois, I completed a Graduate Teaching Certificate program and earned the Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award.

My doctoral research was in protein engineering. Articles I published in my early research career are foundational to the field of yeast surface display as a genetic engineering technique; the results have been applied in various fields. One example is improved antibody binding affinity, which has supported medical applications including the development of more effective chemotherapeutics.

External Links

• ResearchGate profile
• Google Scholar profile
• ORCiD