Heading to NASA to Become a Better Teacher
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.
