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Bethel Focus
A Magazine of Bethel University
Recently in the Sciences…
- Student Presents Work in Sweden During Nobel Week
- Electron Microscope Retiring with Reynhout
- Bethel Science Prof Presents in China
- Lab Named in Honor of Stephens
- Women Faculty Inspire Girls to Become Scientists
Seaberg was one of only 25 college science students in the world selected to participate in the Stockholm International Youth Science Seminar.
Student Presents Work in Sweden During Nobel Week
Matt Seaberg presenting his optical physics research to students in Stockholm
Conversing with a Nobel laureate in Stockholm last December was a rare opportunity for Bethel alumnus Matthew Seaberg ’07, one of 25 outstanding young science students from around the world selected to take part in the Stockholm International Youth Science Seminar (SIYSS), leading up to the 2007 Nobel Awards.
Seaberg qualified for the honor as winner of the 2007 Glenn T. Seaborg Science Award, given annually by the Swedish Council of America to one student of a U.S. university founded by Swedish immigrants.
Seaberg heard lectures by 2007 Nobel laureates and presented to high school students his own summer research project, “Suppression of Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory (LIGO) Mirror Vibrational Modes.” The apex of the week was participation in the Nobel Award ceremonies on December 10.
“At the reception, if you wanted to talk to the Nobel Laureates, all you had to do was find them, assuming there wasn’t already a crowd around them,” says Matt. “I personally talked to Gerhard Ertl, who received the prize in chemistry. I was impressed with his friendliness…and was further impressed when I found out that his degree is actually in my field of physics.”
Seaberg is now studying for a Ph.D. at the University of Colorado Boulder, which has the highest ranking graduate program in the U.S. in optical physics. He has a full-ride teaching assistantship.
Electron Microscope Retiring with Reynhout
James Reynhout, the biology professor who taught scores of Bethel students to use the electron microscope over a span of 28 years, will be retiring at the end of the spring semester.
“Students have gone on to use what they learned [at Bethel] in other laboratories and graduate schools,” says Reynhout, who in 1981 installed Bethel’s first electron microscope (EM), donated by the University of Minnesota veterinary school, and also its replacement in 1993 from Abbott-Northwestern Hospital.
With expertise in servicing electron microscopes becoming more and more rare, Bethel is decommissioning its EM, and instead will use a more recently acquired fluorescence microscope to study minute, elemental structure.
“Much of the types of research being done in the biological sciences these days center on using molecular techniques, often using DNA analysis,” says Reynhout.
Bethel Science Prof Presents in China
Bethel University Physics Professor Richard Peterson gave three lectures in China in November under a Templeton Foundation grant. The lectures were part of the prestigious Templeton Series discourse “Science and Religion: Current Dialogue,” which were given at Shandong University, located in the eastern coastal city of Jinan.
Peterson’s lecture “Science Under Stress in the 20th Century—Lessons from the Case of Early Nuclear Physics” probed how, historically, the collective worldview and foundational values of scientists have shaped the field.
Peterson was invited by Professor Mel Stewart, Bethel philosophy professor emeritus, who organized the Templeton Science and Religion Series. Lectures in the series will be compiled into books published in both Chinese and English.
Lab Named in Honor of Stephens
Bethel College of Arts & Sciences Provost Jay Barnes congratulates Stephens at the entrance to the renamed laboratory.
Chemistry classroom AC109 was recently renamed the Dale Stephens Organic Chemistry Laboratory. Stephens, who retired last spring after teaching chemistry at Bethel since 1968, was generous not only with his life’s work. He and his wife Sharon recently donated a $100,000 matching gift to fund a summer student-faculty research endowment. The gift has inspired other chemistry alumni to support the growing department. “When I think of Dale Stephens,” said Provost Jay Barnes, “I think of integrity, wholeness, consistency, passion, and giving sacrificially to advance the mission of Bethel. We hope we live up to the standards he set, and that this lab will honor his legacy.”
Women Faculty Inspire Girls to Become Scientists
Some of the girls loved mixing up polymer (plastic). Others, peering into microscopes, were amazed by the teeming life in pond water. Many clicked with creating math models on computers, or identifying which native animals lived in the natural habitats around Bethel’s campus.
It was all part of “Girls in Science: Changing the World” on Saturday, November 3, a day designed to fascinate and inspire. The women science and math faculty at Bethel hosted 52 fourth and fifth grade girls from Riverview Math and Science School in Brooklyn Center, Minn., which had received a Honeywell grant to inspire its young female students to consider careers in technology and science—fields where women are underrepresented. Riverview partnered with Bethel because its former science curriculum coordinator, Professor Patricia Paulson, now teaches at Bethel.
Several girls later voiced a desire to attend college and study science.
Throughout the day, the grade-school girls paired up with female Bethel students majoring in math or science, who served as role models and also lent a hand with the activities.
“Test results show girls equal to boys at fourth grade but significantly below boys by 12th grade in these areas,” Paulson noted. “We believe that by giving young girls a ‘can do’ message prior to middle school, and providing actual role models, we may help change their vision of their future career path.”
Under the same Honeywell grant, a similar day at Bethel for third graders from Riverview Elementary is planned for this spring.