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Trio of Calvin students earn nation’s most prestigious STEM research award

msk23@calvin.edu — Wed, 02 Apr 2025 11:25:49 +0000

Trio of Calvin students earn nation’s most prestigious STEM research award msk23@calvin.edu Wed, 04/02/2025 - 07:25

Aerin Baker (Saugatuck, Mich.), Maggie Grabill (Ada, Mich.), and Ava Tatko (Grand Rapids, Mich.) have been named 2025 Goldwater Scholars. The scholarship, awarded by the Barry M. Goldwater Foundation, is widely considered to be the most prestigious award for undergraduate students in the natural sciences, mathematics, and engineering in the United States.

More than 1,300 students from 445 schools applied for the award, but only 441 students received it. This marks the second straight year that three �鶹�� students earned the distinction.

“To have multiple students most years earning this distinction is a testament to the strength of our students and the strength of our research programs here at Calvin,” said Chris Hartemink, professor of engineering and Calvin’s campus representative for the scholarship.

Personalized research experiences

Common to all three students’ experience is they were invited into research during their first year at Calvin. One thing they discovered was they would have incredible access to their professors and be seen as partners in the research.

“The professors are so intentional about connecting with you as an individual, as a person, and that grows during the research,” said Baker, a junior studying chemistry. “You are working alongside your professor, not under them.”

“Whenever I had advice to give or a research-related question to ask I could walk into my research advisor’s office anytime and sit down and have a conversation,” said Tatko, a junior studying engineering with an energy, environmental and sustainability concentration. “At a larger university, where you have more of an impersonal relationship, that is not an option.”

Impressive outcomes

While the students have felt like partners in the research, their names being listed as co-authors alongside their professors in major journal articles validate that feeling.

“We’ve published four papers and we are working on a fifth now,” said Baker, who also presented her research at the American Chemical Society’s National Meeting in Denver, Colorado this past summer. “My advisor [Professor Doug Vander Griend] and I are also working on a collaboration with a university in France.”

Grabill, a chemical engineering and chemistry double major is only a sophomore, yet she already has two publications to her name.

Maggie Grabill '27 earned the Goldwater Scholarship as a sophomore. Most awardees are juniors.

As for Tatko, she’s already seeing the tangible benefits of her research on a global scale. She’s been working on getting a manuscript published about centralized chlorination for rural communities in the Andean mountains in Ecuador. While she says the water disinfection systems in the U.S. are well proven, they aren’t necessarily available to other countries because of material needs and regulation restrictions.

“So, the engineering department at Calvin is partnering with an engineering and missions organization in Ecuador and we are working with them to do design for specific communities. So, I have been organizing and doing design for 18 different communities over six years of data and organizing that into a formalized paper to get it published to share the design so others can do it for other countries.”

Practical applications

In Spring 2024, Tatko got to travel with her research advisor and two other student researchers to install the design they had created as a prototype in their lab during her first year of summer research.

Ava Tatko (left) in Ecuador with her fellow student researchers and her research advisor, Julie Wildschut (center).

“It was so very interesting to have my research directly applicable. It was novel research, and we then had the opportunity to install it and do ‘real engineering’ and work with the community and make sure they knew how to do maintenance and installation themselves so they could operate it once we had returned to the U.S.,” said Tatko.

Support leads to success

While Baker, Grabill and Tatko realize the research experiences they received at Calvin helped them earn the prestigious Goldwater award, they also credit their professors and advisors who invested countless hours to help their students stand out amongst their peers.

“All the applicants worked closely with Professor Hartemink during the month of January to do essay writing and drafts and reviews and to make sure this application was as polished as it could be,” said Tatko.

“I had been told as a sophomore you’ll put your best foot forward, but know that you can’t be as competitive as the juniors because you only have one year of experience,” said Grabill. “So, I thought I’d be applying next year. But I’m super grateful that despite the odds, Professor Hartemink and other professors at Calvin had enough confidence in me to take the time to write letters of recommendation.”

“I think Calvin provided me a lot of support to win the Goldwater,” said Tatko. “My application wouldn’t have been as strong without Chris Hartemink’s and Julie Wildschut’s, my research advisor, guidance and support throughout the process.”

Made the right decision

While the three still have time to decide their next step after Calvin, one thing they all agree on: they made the right choice in coming to Calvin.

“100%! I thought my idea of research was pretty solid coming in, but as I’ve gone through Calvin, it’s a lot deeper than I originally thought. You get to connect with so many people, collaborate not just in your own lab, but across departments and with people from other schools who have knowledge of what you are working on,” said Baker. “Calvin is a great place in the research community and a lot of great opportunities come out of that.”

“I don’t think I’d be where I am if I wasn’t at Calvin. I think it’s been a really great experience,” said Grabill.

“The longer I’m at Calvin the more grateful I am that I chose to come here,” said Tatko. “It’s really worked out for me in every sense I wanted.”

Interested in learning more about Calvin and the opportunities available to you? Get started.

Wed, 04/02/2025 - 12:00

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Chemistry professor Doug Vander Griend researches alongside Aerin Baker '26. At Calvin, students have opportunities to work 1-on-1 with professors on important research projects. Baker's research experience has already led to co-authoring multiple papers for journals and presenting at a national conference.

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Getting Ready to Fly at �鶹��

msk23@calvin.edu — Mon, 11 Nov 2024 22:56:25 +0000

Getting Ready to Fly at �鶹�� msk23@calvin.edu Mon, 11/11/2024 - 17:56

For one weekend each month, Reuben Arends heads about 45 miles east to Grand Ledge Army Aviation Support Facility and Armory where he works on helicopters.

“Something I always wanted to do since I was a kid was to fly something,” said Arends. “And the military was always something that appealed to me too. I thought it was cool. It’s very different than any other job that I’ve seen.”

During his senior year at Unity Christian High School (Hudsonville, Mich.) Arends joined the Army National Guard. After high school he completed basic training in Oklahoma before moving on to advanced individual training (AIT) in Virginia.

“As my AIT graduation date was approaching, I was wondering what’s my next step after this,” said Arends.

Knowing he didn’t want to be far from his family, that he wanted a Christian education, and he was looking for a strong engineering program, �鶹�� became the clear choice for Arends.

Right Place, Right Time

“My goal is to go to Army Flight school and fly Blackhawks,” said Arends. “And I know a degree from here will help.”

So this fall, Arends started at Calvin pursuing an engineering degree with a mechanical concentration. Within weeks of starting, he realized he was in the right place at the right time as �鶹�� announced it was starting an aerospace engineering program.

“It was a pretty pleasant surprise,” said Arends, who plans to switch his concentration to align even better with his future goals.

A Depth of Preparation

As Arends prepares for the next step in his journey, he’s grateful for the community he’s part of at Calvin.

“The community is proving to be better than I expected,” said Arends. “In the military environment you have to look out for yourself, here it’s very different, people really care for other people.”

He also appreciates the depth of his education.

“An education is one thing, but here there’s much more of a focus on development that goes beyond just an education,” said Arends. “This place uses a Christian lens to grow you in more ways than just your degree and that’s definitely appealing.”

Mon, 11/11/2024 - 12:00

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Reuben Arends (middle) with members of his family at his graduation from Advanced Individual Training.

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Bracing for Impact: Wind Expert says Hurricane Debris Poses Serious Threat

msk23@calvin.edu — Wed, 09 Oct 2024 11:06:12 +0000

Bracing for Impact: Wind Expert says Hurricane Debris Poses Serious Threat msk23@calvin.edu Wed, 10/09/2024 - 07:06

For 30 years, Professor Fred Haan has been studying wind’s effect on structures. His research primarily involves the wind tunnel testing of buildings and structures both for hurricanes and tornadoes. In fact, he spent this past year on sabbatical at Western University in London, Ontario, considered to be the birthplace of this kind of wind tunnel testing. There, he gained a better understanding of the effects debris has during a high-wind event.

Haan’s experience also includes surveying areas that have been hit by tornadoes and hurricanes to see how structures designed to withstand certain wind speeds behaved.

With Hurricane Milton just hours away from making landfall, we sat down with Haan, an engineering professor at �鶹��, to discuss what we might expect from this massive weather event.

Some areas that are in the path of Hurricane Milton were recently ravaged by Hurricane Helene. What concerns do you have with a potential double-whammy scenario? Does that add another layer to consider?

It can. In terms of structures, one significant thing that happens to buildings in hurricanes is that you get water intrusion into the building. So, sometimes you can have a situation where the building looks fine on the outside, like the roof hasn’t ripped off or the walls are still intact, but water has been forced in, the air pressure has forced it in through soffit vents or around the edges of windows, forcing water into the building. Or there has been some damage, maybe small damage and water has gotten in and with such a short amount of time between the last hurricane and this one there’s going to be a lot more water coming in.

A lot of structures may look fine, but it’s the water that gets inside that does so much damage. So, if you had a tree fall on your house (during Helene) and it punched a hole in the roof, it’s quite likely it hasn’t been fixed yet, and so you’re going to get a whole bunch more water in your house. So, I think structurally or from a house standpoint that’s one of the most important things to consider with another hurricane coming so fast after the other one hit.

With debris still not cleaned up following Helene, what impact will that have on structures as Milton rolls in?

Any time you have stuff outside that can become a projectile that’s massively dangerous. When a tornado is on its way or when a hurricane is on its way, anything that you add to the potential debris flying around is very dangerous.

Sometimes people say that the strength of a neighborhood is only as strong as its weakest house, because once the weakest house goes that house generates a lot of debris that can puncture windows, puncture doors. You can just punch holes in houses with debris, and if you just added to the debris field—the potential amount of debris—I think the possibility of a lot more damage is high.

As Milton approaches Florida, how significant a factor is it if the wind speed’s projection is 10 m.p.h. higher or lower than the current projection at landfall?

Well, it’s significant, because the damage, the pressure, the force that the wind is exerting on a building goes by the square of the velocity. So, if the wind speed is 10 m.p.h. you get a certain amount of force and if the wind speed is 20 m.p.h. you get four times the force, not just double. So, it gets big in a hurry, and as you keep going up the wind speed, the force that the wind is giving you rises a lot faster. So, it is significant.

How are the structures in Tampa and St. Petersburg, which seem to be in the direct path of the storm, setup to withstand the projected wind speeds and storm surge?

That’s an interesting question, because there’s different categories of buildings. There are buildings which are called engineered structures, so that would be anything like an office complex or an industrial building or a commercial building, or something like that. Those are designed by engineers for specific wind speed and for specific types of hurricane events. Other structures, like houses and smaller scale things, those are not typically engineered structures, those are covered by code practices, and so they have to follow a particular code when they are built, and depending on when they were built, they may have this code, or they might have that code, or they might have that code. And a lot of people do a lot of research on this code change that happened after Hurricane Andrew for example in 1992, how much did that affect things? And how much did the code change that happened in 2010, how did that affect resilience to hurricanes like this, but when you hit an area like Tampa, I’d say the engineered structures are probably mostly going to be fine, and there’s a whole range of structures out there that were built at different times that could have very different responses to the storm.

Wed, 10/09/2024 - 12:00

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Ready for Takeoff: A Christ-Centered Aerospace Engineering Program

msk23@calvin.edu — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 11:36:17 +0000

Ready for Takeoff: A Christ-Centered Aerospace Engineering Program msk23@calvin.edu Tue, 09/24/2024 - 07:36

Ken Visser’s fascination with aero is palpable.

“My enthusiasm for aero is just over the hill. I love it!,” said Visser.

It all started in 1969.

“When I was five years old my dad made me watch something significant,” said Visser, referencing the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. “From that point forward, I collected everything on space. I wrote letters to NASA, and I received lots of material back from them, including pictures.”

Building A Career

Then, in seventh grade, Visser was allowed to participate in a science fair where he built a model of Launch Complex 39, where they launched Apollo missions, on an 8’ x 4’ sheet of plywood. He realized if he was going to enter the science fair to win, he’d need to know everything he could possibly be asked. So, he learned as much as he could, and the more he learned, the more fascinated he became.

Fast forward 40 years and Visser has had quite the career in aerospace, including working at NASA and Boeing, and for the past couple of decades as a professor of aerospace engineering at Clarkson University, a small private university in upstate New York.

However, over the past couple of years, God was stirring up something in Visser’s heart.

Called to a New Mission

“I believe God was calling me to do specific kingdom work based on all the experience He’d given me up to this point,” said Visser. “Forty years ago, when I was graduating high school and wanted to study aerospace engineering at a Reformed university, I couldn’t find one.”

So, four decades later, Visser scanned the higher education landscape yet again and what he discovered was all too familiar. “It was pretty much the same as it was back then.”

So, he contacted six Christ-centered universities in the United States and asked them if they were interested in starting an aerospace program.

“All six were interested,” said Visser. “But only two could commit the resources to do it.”

One of those two was �鶹��.

The ultimate deciding factor? “Calvin was the closest to my wife’s family in upstate New York. We can make it there in a day’s drive.”

Launching a New Venture

So Visser is preparing to launch something new at �鶹��: an aerospace engineering program. And his “why” is deep.

“I only have so many years on this earth, and I wanted to help provide an opportunity for young Christian men and women to study aerospace engineering in a Christian environment,” said Visser. “These four years are very formative for students and, as God is sovereign over everything we do, including aerospace engineering, providing the opportunity to learn in a Christian environment is a great opportunity”

Visser says he thinks it’s absolutely invaluable for someone who is a Christian to study their vocation in a Christian environment where they can discover how to integrate their Christian faith with their field, how to design something and do it in a Christian way, and to ask what does designing something in a Christian way even mean?

“Engineering students aren’t coming to Calvin to go out into the world to be traditional missionaries, per se. They want to be engineers,” said Visser. “Yet, they are discovering how to serve God and be a missionary as a Christian engineer and that concept takes time to develop. So, offering the environment to do that formative work is absolutely crucial.”

Growing Interest

While the aerospace concentration won’t be added officially to Calvin’s nationally respected engineering program until Fall 2025, Visser is already fielding quite a bit of interest.

“A family came to visit recently and their son, who is in his senior year of high school, walked into my office and I could tell right away his enthusiasm for aero was just like mine at that age,” said Visser.

He said the young man’s eyes lit up when he saw all the artifacts in Visser’s office, including a photo of lunar module commander for Apollo 13, Fred Haise, who Visser had spent several hours with on one occasion.

“It’s a surprise in a way, but it’s like you are unleashing this unbridled enthusiasm, similar to what I had when I was that age when I was wanting to do something with rockets and spaceships. Students are saying, ‘Wow, I can do this at Calvin?’ And I can say, ‘yes, you can do that at Calvin.”

An Ideal Launching Pad

While Visser will have a leading role in launching the new aerospace engineering program, he isn’t the only professor with a background in aero. In fact, he joins a program that has a number of faculty with aerospace experience, including Matt Heun, who worked with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory before teaching at Calvin, and Fred Haan, whose specialty is experimental aerodynamics, to name a couple.

“This is a terrifically strong engineering program,” said Visser. “The academically excellent, Christ-centered focus of this ABET-accredited program provides an ideal launching pad for students who want to pursue the many paths an aerospace engineering degree opens up.”

Opening a World of Opportunities

And Visser says there are a lot of paths one can take inside aerospace.

“For instance, aerodynamics, propulsion, stability and control—how to coordinate and move things around, structures of an aircraft of a satellite—that kind of stuff,” said Visser. “And it doesn’t have to be airplanes or rockets. At Boeing, I worked with an America’s Cup team in the area of hydrodynamics. It encompasses vehicle design in auto racing to the development of wind turbines for renewable energy. I’ve recommended students go work for Ferrari in the wind tunnel in Italy. You can be anything from a flight test engineer to a liaison engineer—the person who talks with those on the factory floor and with the engineers to improve processes. There are so many opportunities.”

For more details about the program, contact Gayle Ermer, engineering department chair.

Tue, 09/24/2024 - 12:00

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Ken Visser helped design the Boeing 767-400ER, resulting in a patent of a novel raked aerodynamic wingtip currently flown on the aircraft and applied to other Boeing designs.

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Students Tasked with Designing Calvin’s Solar Farm

msk23@calvin.edu — Wed, 18 Sep 2024 14:48:26 +0000

Students Tasked with Designing Calvin’s Solar Farm msk23@calvin.edu Wed, 09/18/2024 - 10:48

It’s the first day of class, students had just taken their seats, and literally within 30 seconds, Professor Matt Heun spoke these words to his Engineering 333 class.

“The project this semester is we are going to design Calvin’s solar farm.”

After a few-second pause, one student said, “sweet.”

A few seconds later, another student started to clap, which spread slowly throughout the room. The room seemed filled with nervous excitement, something acknowledged multiple times over the course of the next hour.

An Intentionally Designed Daunting Task

“From where you sit right now it probably seems quite daunting,” said Heun.

Heun knows it’s daunting, because that’s the point. His teaching pedagogy is to use creative problem-based and team-based strategies to assist student learning. It’s something he brought to Calvin 20-plus years ago. “I teach that way because I have a background in aerospace where we are always doing something new, always challenging ourselves to take a step that’s never been taken before,” said Heun. “That’s what we want with education, young people full of enthusiasm and energy, paired with older and wiser practitioners who provide guidance. That’s a cool combination.”

An Invested and Supportive Community

Heun is one of those advisers, but he spent a portion of his first class introducing students to a number of other guides, from director of facilities Jennifer Ambrose to electronic shop technician Chuck Holwerda to the client for this project: Dirk Pruis, the university’s chief financial officer. Interim president Greg Elzinga was in attendance to emphasize the importance of this work.

“There are all these journals that talk about the future of higher education, and one of the biggest challenges you’ll see in some of those are campus infrastructure and energy for the future,” said Elzinga. “So not only is this project important from a learning aspect for all of you, it’s also important to the future of Calvin for some very practical reasons, but also for our creation care commitment as a university community.”

“This is who we are at Calvin, how we think about creation care as Christians. We have a responsibility to the environment, and that’s who we are at our core. We signed onto that at Greg’s level a couple of presidents back,” said Pruis, referring to the 2017 signing of the President’s Climate commitment.

Lots of Questions and A New Twist

As Heun continued to outline the project, students asked questions about the weekly rhythm, the scope, and the details needed in project deliverables.

What was also revealed to the students in Heun’s class is that one of those deliverables would be needed by mid-semester. For the first time in the 20-plus years Heun has been creating novel projects for his students, the two sections of his ENGR 333 classes are partnering with both a structural design class in the engineering department and a physics class, to help answer the question.

“At the middle of the semester, we have a deliverable for the physics class and the structural class to provide information so we can all work together,” said Heun.

So, there was no time to waste. Heun’s first assignment due the evening of the first class was for the students to apply to be part of one of four teams who would each be digging deep into a particular type of mounting option for the solar panels. They were expected to present their initial findings two weeks later.

Diving In

“I think it’s a big project and I’m very excited about the prospect of working with other students from across departments and across concentrations,” said Rory Marco, a senior engineering major (mechanical concentration) from Sacramento, California.

“I’m honestly really excited because it can be easy in school for projects to just feel like it’s busywork or just examples, but this feels like it’s actually helping people and our university, which is amazing,” said Aiden Ehmann, a senior engineering major (mechanical concentration) from Durham, North Carolina. “I think I’m just excited for working with the administration for deliverables and all the aspects of creatively approaching this project.”

While the students are presenting their work and receiving feedback from the client throughout the semester, their final presentation with their recommendation for Calvin’s solar farm will take place in early December.

Wed, 09/18/2024 - 12:00

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On September 17, students in ENGR 333 were already presenting their initial findings to their client, CFO Dirk Pruis. The students were introduced to the project two weeks prior.

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