Shenda Baker, 1993
B.S., Grinnell College, Ph.D. California Institute of Technology
Physical Chemistry

I started a three year leave of absence from the Chemistry Department to pursue polymers in a different venue--a company called Synedgen (www.synedgen.com). Its just across the street from HMC, so stop by for a visit if you are in town. The last few years had a focus on broadening the Global Clinics to include as many departments as possible and to include Singapore and Iceland in interesting projects in water purification, volcanic and global monitoring and retrieving energy from lava-heated water. I still have a couple of students and post-doc Hsiang-Wei Lu at Harvey Mudd working on copolymers and nanoscopic structures. For those of you who know my kids, the oldest is off to college and the younger is a drummer in a rock band. Not hard to imagine!


G. William Daub, 1978, Seely W. Mudd Professor of Chemistry
B.A., Pomona College; Ph.D., Stanford University
Organic Chemistry

Another year slides on by. In addition to taking another sabbatical semester this past spring, have been preparing to teach some of the new core courses (Chemistry Lab and the new Writing Course). On a personal note, I bought a new bicycle this past year and enjoy riding it a lot. As an organic chemist, however, I felt compelled to buy a carbon fiber frame bike rather than an aluminum framed bike! Rising junior Mary Van Vleet worked on various aspects of the Claisen rearrangement this past spring and summer, and she and I baked the top two entries (Fresh Fruit Tart and Mocha Cheesecake) in the 3rd Annual Chemistry Bake-Off this summer. Stop by my office if you want to see our "Award" for best lab! On the family front, my eldest son, Eric, is doing a postdoctoral fellowship in geophysics at Los Alamos Scientific Labs. He continues to run, bake wonderful bread, and brew excellent beer. He even has me brewing a bit! My second son, Brian, is finishing his fourth year as a physics graduate student in physics at MIT. He is doing much of his experimental work at Los Alamos as well. My third son, Michael, is beginning his third year of graduate study in mathematics at Berkeley where he is studying number theory with Kenneth Ribet. Bringing up the rear, Mary Beth will be a senior chemistry major (organic synthesis no less) at Williams. She is thinking about grad school in a year. My wife, Sandy, is busy with her pediatric practice of 28 years and continues to put up with me.

Best wishes for a successful and happy 2010 and 2011!


Karl A. Haushalter, 2003
B.A., Rice University; Ph.D., Harvard University
Biological Chemistry

During the 2009/2010 academic year, I was awarded a Mellon Career Enhancement grant to fund my sabbatical professional development activities.  I used the funds to broaden my intellectual and personal interests by taking two classes at the Claremont School of Theology and to jumpstart my transition into a new research field by initiating a collaboration at the City of Hope National Medical Center.  Studying at a seminary was an unconventional but very rewarding way for me to spend the fall semester of my sabbatical.  In addition to growing intellectually and spiritually, I also was reminded of what it is like to be a student in a classroom and I hope to be able to apply these lessons to my courses at HMC.  During the spring semester, I worked as a visiting investigator at the City of Hope National Medical Center in the laboratory of Dr. John J. Rossi on a collaborative project to develop a next generation lentivirus vector that could be used for the gene therapy treatment of HIV-AIDS. This project allowed me to apply my biological chemistry experience to a completely new and very tangible target – knocking down expression of the CCR5 HIV co-receptor in targeted cells.  With this new project, I still interface with basic science and its discoveries, but I have a chance to try to harness them towards a real-world application.  During my time in the lab, I was able to learn new techniques, including the care and handling of umbilical cord blood cells, which we used for testing our lentivirus.   I also appreciated interacting with and learning from a diverse set of project members including fellow scientists and clinicians. When I return from sabbatical, I look forward to continuing this project as a collaboration between the HMC students in my lab and the scientists at the City of Hope.  In addition to my professional development pursuits, I also took some time to travel with my family including trips to Paris, New York, Washington DC, and Boston.  After a year away, I very much missed my friends, students, and colleagues at HMC and I look forward to jumping back into life at HMC.

Adam R. Johnson, 1999
B.A., Oberlin College; Ph.D., Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Inorganic Chemistry

During academic year 2009-2010, I was involved in an exciting new teaching experience related to the new core curriculum. Along with Jeff Groves in the HSA department, I taught one of the pilot sections of the new writing course. We worked our way through a film Koyaanisqatsi and a book, Zen in the Art of Archery, the students wrote a few papers, and I spent a lot of time reading, teaching and evaluating writing. This course had a strong positive impact on my professional development; I now feel much stronger as a writer, as a writing instructor, and better able to evaluate student writing. I got to use my new writing skills in the preparation of three NSF proposals. One was written jointly with Karl Haushalter and will fund the summer REU program for the next three years. The second RUI grant will fund my research group as we continue to study asymmetric hydroamination. The third was an unsuccessful attempt to garner additional support for http://www.ionicviper.org. We are currently seeking support from a variety of other sources to continue to develop this teaching and learning resource. I had some of the largest classes in my career this past year. Organometallics was taught to both Juniors and Seniors in the fall, with almost 20 students. In the spring I had 30 in Inorganic (Chem 104), including 25% from the other 4 colleges, and two large lab sections. Students kept me busy! On the research productivity end of things, I wrote and submitted two manuscripts this spring. One has appeared in print (online anyway) and the other has been accepted. I have three more in the pipeline. I have had a large research group for the past year or so and it looks to remain large for the foreseeable future. I had only one thesis student last year but 4 or 5 additional students called my research lab home a few hours per week. This report wouldn’t be complete without mentioning my family. Natty turns 9 this summer and will be starting fourth grade in the fall. Mia really enjoyed kindergarten and is looking forward to first grade and turning 6! Natty has been doing a lot of ballet, and both kids are playing piano and taking Japanese language and culture classes every Saturday. Wendy has begun student teaching Alexander technique and continues to teach violin and play professionally. I continue to run, having run two marathons and six half-marathons in the last year. I am currently training to run the Baltimore marathon in October 2010.


Kerry K. Karukstis, 1984
B.S., Duke University; Ph.D., Duke University
Physical Chemistry

I hope that this newsletter finds all of you in good spirits and good health.  It was fantastic to see so many of you at our department brunch in San Francisco during the ACS meeting in March.  That was certainly a highlight for me this past year.  I hope that we can gather again when the meeting comes to Anaheim in late March 2011 – even if you are not attending the conference!   Other professional high points of the year included a new fluorescence instrument in the lab, presenting our spectroscopic phase diagram construction approach at a conference in London, serving on the NSF Committee of Visitors for the Division of Chemistry, being chosen as the Council on Undergraduate Research Volunteer of the Year, and hosting a summit meeting in Washington, D.C. for 51 female full professors of chemistry and physics at liberal arts colleges.   I finished the year off by being elected Chair of the Faculty for the coming year – that will keep me busy!   On the personal side, my dog KC and my garden continue to provide much relaxation.  I wish you all the same contentment.  Keep in touch!


Katherine Maloney, 2009
B.S., Pacific Lutheran University, Ph.D., Cornell University
Organic Chemistry

Last July I received a warm welcome into the HMC Chemistry Community. With generous mentoring from Bill Daub and others, I helped to pilot the new ‘Structure’ module of General Chemistry in the fall, while teaching a section of Organic Chemistry Laboratory and mentoring three excellent senior thesis students (Katie Near, Caitlin Olmsted, and Camille Sultana, all ’10). In the spring semester, I taught the Chemistry of Carbons Compounds along with the corresponding laboratory. With help from my three seniors, I also welcomed four more students to my research lab, one of whom (Millie Fung ’11) continued into the summer.

I am excited to announce that the Maloney Lab is off and running. Our focus is on natural products, including their isolation and structure elucidation, the ecological pressures underlying their production, and their use to inform evolutionary relationships (phylogeny) of producing organisms. Students working in the lab have performed and developed protocols for fungal culturing, organic extraction (of fungal culture broth and soft coral tissues), bacterial growth-inhibition assays (versus Bacillus subtilis and Xylella fastidiosa), fungal rDNA analysis, metabolite analysis using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GCMS) and liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LCMS), and natural product isolation using both flash column- and high performance-liquid chromatography.

Perhaps the highlight of the year for me was a collecting trip to Palau (in Micronesia) with Catherine McFadden (HMC Biology Department), funded by Research Corporation. Using SCUBA, Cathy and I collected 397 soft coral samples for use in student research projects. Later in the summer, I also participated in a slightly smaller collecting trip – across the street to the Bernard Field Station with Mudd students Tom Aldrich (’12), Millie Fung (’11), and Jessie Roy (’11). From these plant samples, Tom and Millie later isolated 92 strains of fungi for chemical studies.

2009 also marked a major milestone in my life as I purchased my first home, a small 1922 bungalow in Fullerton. While charming, the house had been long neglected by the previous owner, so with a lot of help from my boyfriend, Chris, I spent much of the fall fixing it up. The house is in easy walking distance of downtown Fullerton, and I often spend my evenings walking my two dogs – Lilly (a Swiss Mountain Dog) and Winston (a pug), both 3.


Penny Manisco, 2008
B.S., University of Southern California
Lab Tech and Chemical Hygiene Officer

The 2009-2010 academic year was my second full year as the Chemistry department Lab Tech. The increased familiarity and awareness of department needs allowed me to take on more responsibility. I continued to facilitate the ever popular Lead Lab. This year we collaborated with 5th and 6th graders from Sumner and Vista Elementary Schools in Claremont. We soil sampled in 100 degree heat, as well as rain at different points in the fall semester. We were kind of like the US Postal Service in that way, minus the sleet and snow. After the samples were processed, I had the pleasure of running them on atomic absorption spectrometer. I was much better at it this year!

But it always seems just when you get it down they change the rules! So I am embracing the lab curriculum changes for the upcoming academic year to bring some new (to me) labs for our freshmen. We will no longer be doing the Lead Lab with freshmen. Returning to the lineup will be Dumas Bulb, Alum, and a new Solar Cell lab using berries to absorb energy. Hmm, this could be messy!

In addition to my lab prep duties, I have been anointed the Chemical Hygiene Officer, which makes me sort of a safety enforcer. The Chemical Hygiene Plan has been reviewed and revised, and will soon be available on the college website. I am in the process of developing web based training on the Chemical Hygiene Plan, which may be viewed by employees in order to satisfy their training requirement. I am also attempting to perform twice yearly lab inspections of all campus laboratory space where chemicals are used.

Meanwhile, at home, my husband Joe and I are “empty nesters”. Our three children are out on their own (sort of). Our oldest, Matt works for Citrix in Santa Barbara. It seems he went to school there and never wanted to leave. Our daughter Kacie begins her first year as a law student at Michigan State We watch with anticipation as our So Cal girl experiences her first “winter.” Our youngest son Brett will be a junior at Cal. Joe and I enjoy traveling to see our kids when we can. I also on occasion travel with Joe to watch UCLA football, basketball, or whatever, even though I am a Trojan. Fight on!


Lillian McCollum
B.S., Tuskegee University



Philip Myhre
Emeritus

Letting go is hard!  I have become acutely aware of this in recent days as I work to dismantle the laboratory/office that I have occupied during “retirement years.”  It is clear that I have become habituated to “going to the lab.”  I have been doing it on a nearly daily basis for fifty-six of my seventy-seven years!  It is to be expected that contemplating not doing what you have been doing for a large fraction of your life can be a little scary.  It is going to be a new adventure for me.  I think I shall manage to survive life without a laboratory but there may be some anguished moments.  Oh, I was in chemistry labs long before my twenty-first birthday. College and high school chemistry classes had laboratories.  As a kid, I built a lab bench in our basement to accommodate my Gilbert Chemistry set. Additional chemical holdings were acquired through the “kid” network, from drug stores (one could purchase all kinds of chemicals at drug stores in those days), and from the local assayer who let me hang out while he was working in his lab analyzing ore samples.  Needless to say OSHA would have taken a dim view of some of my activities. The local Stauffer Chemical plant wanted an “analytical chemist” for half-time work when I was a senior in college, and a “light” senior course load  got a little busier.  The plant made  super-phosphate fertilizer by treating phosphate rock shipped to Tacoma, WA from Colorado with concentrated sulfuric acid made at the local copper smelter from sulfur dioxide that was released in the smelting process.  Later those components, plus ammonia, were mixed in a reactor  to prepare an ammonium super-phosphate. My job was to do a particle size distribution analysis (you sieve a “representative sample” of the stuff through graded screens), and multiple  phosphate and nitrogen analyses (think Kjeldahl) for each batch.  Also, each day several railway tankers containing concentrated sulfuric acid ca.94-98 % came in the plant from the local smelter. I had the pleasure of titrating samples from each tank. I was kept busy completing these tasks in the “half-time” period allotted, but it got easier with a little practice.  So, I take that date, 1954, as a time when I started to receive regular some financial reward (albeit modest) for practicing chemistry and attempting to teach chemistry.  The rest of the story can be found posted in the HMC Chemistry Department web pages.  But the real purpose of this little piece is to give my sincere thanks to all the students that I have been privileged to work with in classes, instructional laboratories, and in research endeavors.  I have learned a lot from you, and I shall continue to savor many memories of working together.


Gerald Van Hecke ’61, 1970
B.S., Harvey Mudd College; Ph.D., Princeton University
Physical Chemistry

Academic 2009-2010 started out easy enough in PChem Lab but then there was the new pilot general chemistry course wherein intermolecular forces, phase behavior, thermodynamics and electrochemistry were covered in 20 lectures.   Again my spring assignment was C52 Group Theory, Quantum Chemistry, and Spectroscopy [G,Q&S] to which was added a general chemistry laboratory.  In what may be developing into an underground movement, I again directed two seniors in a glass blowing reading course complete this year with an introduction to the glass lathe.

The lab will miss Mark Cyffka `09 who moved on to Park Systems, a Bay Area firm whose business is centered on AFM s.  Curiously Mark wanted to do something different for his senior thesis than the excess Gibbs studies he had pursued since his sophomore year. He started a project to learn about the use of liquid crystals for the vapor detection of toxic materials.  In his studies Mark learned to use our AFM to look at changes in the surface bound liquid crystal under the influence of a target vapor.  Little did he know that such studies would allow him to move onto a starting industrial career.

The spring sophomore intro to research program saw Thomas Aldrich `12 do some very precise DSC studies of the various pure alkyl glucosides that have been the object of study as lyotropic assembling systems in water and ionic liquids.  The summer was busy enough with Thomas Avila `11 undertaking a synthesis project looking to expand the library of disubstituted fluorenes seeking liquid crystalline behavior.  Also John Robinson `12 picked up Mark Cyffka’s vapor detection project. 

The Karukstis/Van Hecke joint project looking to study green surfactants funded by the NSF added to the summer activities by supporting four students: Karen Hinselman `12, Hayden Hatch `12, Malous Kassarian `12, and Heidi Linder `11.  The happy group from both labs is pictured – probably happy because the photo was taken on the last day of summer research.

Academic 2009-2010 started out easy enough in PChem Lab but then there was the new pilot general chemistry course wherein intermolecular forces, phase behavior, thermodynamics and electrochemistry were covered in 20 lectures.   Again my spring assignment was C52 Group Theory, Quantum Chemistry, and Spectroscopy [G,Q&S] to which was added a general chemistry laboratory.  In what may be developing into an underground movement, I again directed two seniors in a glass blowing reading course complete this year with an introduction to the glass lathe.
The lab will miss Mark Cyffka `09 who moved on to Park Systems, a Bay Area firm whose business is centered on AFM s.  Curiously Mark wanted to do something different for his senior thesis than the excess Gibbs studies he had pursued since his sophomore year. He started a project to learn about the use of liquid crystals for the vapor detection of toxic materials.  In his studies Mark learned to use our AFM to look at changes in the surface bound liquid crystal under the influence of a target vapor.  Little did he know that such studies would allow him to move onto a starting industrial career.
The spring sophomore intro to research program saw Thomas Aldrich `12 do some very precise DSC studies of the various pure alkyl glucosides that have been the object of study as lyotropic assembling systems in water and ionic liquids.  The summer was busy enough with Thomas Avila `11 undertaking a synthesis project looking to expand the library of disubstituted fluorenes seeking liquid crystalline behavior.  Also John Robinson `12 picked up Mark Cyffka’s vapor detection project. 
The Karukstis/Van Hecke joint project looking to study green surfactants funded by the NSF added to the summer activities by supporting four students: Karen Hinselman `12, Hayden Hatch `12, Malous Kassarian `12, and Heidi Linder `11.  The happy group from both labs is pictured – probably happy because the photo was taken on the last day of summer research.



There was some travel this past year.  A whirlwind trip to London to the attend the Thermodynamics2009 conference – by whirlwind means leaving LA Tuesday evening to arrive London a 6 am to take the tube to Imperial College in time for the opening ceremony at 9 am.  Other more leisurely travels involved the spring ACS meeting in SF, the 23th International Liquid Crystal Conference in Karkow, Poland, and the 21st International Conference on Chemical Thermodynamics in Tsukuba, Japan.
The Board of Governors of the Alumni Association continues as a major volunteer effort.
Poster presented

Thermodynamics2009, London, Sep 2009
Gerald R Van Hecke, Maxwell Kushner-Lenhoff, and Trevor A McQueen
Classifying and predicting reentrancy liquid crystalline mixtures by the equal Gibbs equation

ACS SF, Mar 2010
Thomas R Avila, Arthur S Vasek and Gerald R Van Hecke,
 Isothermal piezo-optic coefficients: measurement and applications

ACS SF, Mar 201
Maxwell Kushner-Lenhoff,  Trevor A. McQueen, and Gerald R. Van Hecke, 0
Classifying and predicting reentrancy liquid crystalline mixtures by the equal Gibbs equation

23rd ILLC Krakow, Poland, July 2010
Gerald R. Van Hecke, Maxwell Kushner-Lenhoff and Trevor A. McQueen
Classifying and predicting reentrancy in liquid crystalline mixtures using the equal gibbs energy equation

21st ICCT, Tsukuba, Japan, Aug  2010
Gerald R Van Hecke, Thomas R Avila, and Arthur S Vasek.
 Isothermal piezo-optic coefficients: measurement and applications

21st ICCT, Tsukuba, Japan, Aug  2010
G. R. Van Hecke and K. K. Karukstis
Combining two traditional thermodynamic measurements to create a highly visual and engaging experiment to introduce binary eutectic phase diagrams

There was some travel this past year.  A whirlwind trip to London to the attend the Thermodynamics2009 conference – by whirlwind means leaving LA Tuesday evening to arrive London a 6 am to take the tube to Imperial College in time for the opening ceremony at 9 am.  Other more leisurely travels involved the spring ACS meeting in SF, the 23th International Liquid Crystal Conference in Karkow, Poland, and the 21st International Conference on Chemical Thermodynamics in Tsukuba, Japan.

The Board of Governors of the Alumni Association continues as a major volunteer effort.

Poster presented
Thermodynamics2009, London, Sep 2009
Gerald R Van Hecke, Maxwell Kushner-Lenhoff, and Trevor A McQueen
Classifying and predicting reentrancy liquid crystalline mixtures by the equal Gibbs equation

ACS SF, Mar 2010
Thomas R Avila, Arthur S Vasek and Gerald R Van Hecke,
 Isothermal piezo-optic coefficients: measurement and applications

ACS SF, Mar 2010
Maxwell Kushner-Lenhoff,  Trevor A. McQueen, and Gerald R. Van Hecke, 0
Classifying and predicting reentrancy liquid crystalline mixtures by the equal Gibbs equation

23rd ILLC Krakow, Poland, July 2010
Gerald R. Van Hecke, Maxwell Kushner-Lenhoff and Trevor A. McQueen
Classifying and predicting reentrancy in liquid crystalline mixtures using the equal gibbs energy equation

21st ICCT, Tsukuba, Japan, Aug  2010
Gerald R Van Hecke, Thomas R Avila, and Arthur S Vasek.
 Isothermal piezo-optic coefficients: measurement and applications

21st ICCT, Tsukuba, Japan, Aug  2010
G. R. Van Hecke and K. K. Karukstis
Combining two traditional thermodynamic measurements to create a highly visual and engaging experiment to introduce binary eutectic phase diagrams

Hal Van Ryswyk, 1986
B.A., Carleton College; Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison
Analytical Chemistry

HMC continues to mount solar energy conversion research, centering on dye-sensitized solar cells with porphyrinic dyes on ZnO nanotube photoanodes.  Over last summer Yael Mayer ’11 and Chiara Giammanco ’10 made impressive progress on dye synthesis and delineating the effects of acid etching of the photoanode on cell performance, respectively.  Seniors Mark Hendricks and Chiara Giammanco continued the work as senior theses. Their results, combined with those of Nancy Eisenmenger ‘09, Ryan Pakula ‘09, Steven Pankratz ‘09, and Trevor McQueen ’09 will be presented at the end of this summer at the Gordon Research Conference on Electron Donor-Acceptor Interactions.  In parallel, senior Russell Klare extended the metal-metal coupling in metalloporphyrins project, moving down the periodic table from ruthenium to osmium.

After two years off, I returned to teaching the chemical analysis sequence in the fall.  It was a real joy to teach this course in the computer science “hot air” lab (named for the hot air balloon paintings on three walls).  Having floor-to-ceiling whiteboard on one wall, dual projection screens, a common work table, and computers for every student (and Macs at that!) was neat.  The associated laboratory course is still based on the saltwater aquarium project.  Spring term found me in Chem 22, the core second semester, general chemistry course.  Prof. Kerry Karukstis and I piloted the third half-course in the new core, dubbed “Dynamics.”  In the process we addressed society’s demand for sustainable energy from a chemical perspective.  Guest speakers included Jeffrey Byron, one of five gubernatorially-appointed California Energy Commissioners, and Dr. Daniel Harris, renowned chemical educator, textbook author, and father of HMC’s own Prof. David Money Harris, who gave a wonderful talk on Charles David Keeling’s precise measurements of atmospheric carbon dioxide atop the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii.  Instrumental analysis laboratory featured projects on extracting capsaicin from chili peppers, looking for THC metabolites in hair, and determining if road-kill bones came from carnivores or herbivores based upon the ratio of Sr/Zn.

At home our younger daughter, Claire, graduated from Goucher College with a B.A. in Dance.  Liesl continues work on a Ph.D. in neuroscience at the University of Oregon.  Charlotte teaches elementary music at Vista del Valle Elementary (home of years two and five of the Lead Project), where she leads the only elementary school orchestra in Claremont!  She has her own studio, teaches violin, viola, and cello in the after-school strings program across Claremont, and when time allows, composes!


David A.Vosburg, 2005
B.A. Williams College, Ph.D. The Scripps Research Institute
Organic Chemistry

My fifth year at HMC has been fabulous. It is a delight to teach such motivated and talented students. I have now taught biochemistry twice, which has been a nice complement to the organic courses I teach. I am sure that teaching frosh is somewhere in my future (frosh chem, a writing course, and/or a green chemistry course), but it hasn’t happened yet. Chairing the Scholarly Standing Committee continues to be a challenging and rewarding endeavor.

From our research efforts, my students’ recent synthesis of the antifungal natural product davanone ranked as the fifth-most accessed article in Organic Letters during the second quarter of 2009 and was prominently featured in a recent review article (“The economies of synthesis,” Newhouse, T.; Baran, P.S.; Hoffmann, R.W. Chem. Soc. Rev. 2009, 38, 3010-3021)—the only work by undergraduates to be included. Our seven-step route was fastly shorter and more economical than the only previous enantioselective synthesis, a 20-step route. Students that have continued work on this very productive project include Eric Nacsa ’10 (now at Columbia University), Kanny Wan ’11 (a Beckman Scholar), and Jeep Srisuknimit ‘12. Soon we will collaborate with the Maloney lab for antifungal tests on our synthetic compounds.

We continue to make advances on our endiandric acid project, with significant computational results from a collaboration with the Cave laboratory. The students most responsible for our furthest synthetic advances to date are Rachel Nishimura ’09, Andrew Chung ’10, Laura Poindexter ’11, and Zara Seibel ’11. We are excited to try some polycyclization cascades soon!

My group recently published two new green chemistry experiments for teaching laboratories, including a mild, enzymatic preparation of the flavorant divanillin and an asymmetric, organocatalytic synthesis of the anticoagulant warfarin. Rachel Nishimura ’09 and Chiara Giammanco ’10 worked on divanillin, while Terence Wong ’09 and Camille Sultana ‘10 formed the warfarin team. More recently, Anna Cunningham ’11 and Haley Ham ’12 have developed a new experiment on green, chemoselective reductions and oxidations of citral (from lemongrass) to form other natural perfumes: citronellal, geraniol, nerol, and epoxycitral. I attended the Green Chemistry in Education Workshop in July 2010 and look forward to developing more green experiments and networking with others in this area.

This year I was invited to give three talks at Claremont McKenna, Pomona (a Veritas Forum event), and HMC on the topic “Faith and Science: Can Both Be True?” These led to many stimulating conversations and hopefully were helpful for some who have struggled with the perceived conflict between religion and science. One major point was that the Bible and nature themselves (if properly understood) should not be in conflict, but human interpretations of each (theology and science) are subject to misperception, error, and exaggeration.

On the home front, my wife Kate loves her work with the Mudd-Scripps InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, and our son Nate turned four in June 2010. We adopted Isabella (born November 2008) in February 2010 and hope for another addition to our family through foster-adoption during the 2010-11 academic year.


Kimberly Young, 1989
Administrative Assistant