{"id":23,"date":"2019-05-09T09:48:43","date_gmt":"2019-05-09T16:48:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2019\/?p=23"},"modified":"2019-05-17T16:07:10","modified_gmt":"2019-05-17T23:07:10","slug":"leading-the-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2019\/leading-the-way\/","title":{"rendered":"Leading the Way"},"content":{"rendered":"

In 2006, after a year of<\/strong> field and lab work, Hal Van Ryswyk, John Stauffer Professor of Chemistry, and the entire class of first-year chemistry lab students made one last trip to their off-campus collection site to present their findings to the community. The students had been participating in The Lead Project, a unique research and educational program developed by Van Ryswyk and the Department of Chemistry to test lead levels in soil at local elementary schools.<\/p>\n

Over two semesters, the HMC students traveled regularly by van to Vista del Valle Elementary School, where they led lessons on math and science, collected soil samples with the elementary students and helped interpret the test results. Back on campus, they tested their samples, often under the eye of a webcam they\u2019d set up so the Vista students could watch online.<\/p>\n

As his students prepared to field final questions from the community at Vista del Valle, Van Ryswyk had one more lesson. He recalls saying, \u201cYou\u2019ve done all this science. Think about what it means and how you can explain it, bring it down to English.\u201d In the end, he says, \u201cThat was the most valuable lesson for many of our kids. Through this project, every Harvey Mudd College student came faceto- face with questions regarding the impact of their technical work upon society while simultaneously developing tools to examine this relationship.\u201d<\/p>\n

The successful program lasted six years, until curriculum changes and logistical challenges made it untenable. \u201cWe experienced such growth,\u201d Van Ryswyk says. \u201cWe reached out into the community. The Vista kids loved the hands-on science. Our students learned a lot\u2014if nothing else, that their fourth grade teacher must have been a saint\u2014 and we learned about our students. They really blossomed.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was a group effort,\u201d Van Ryswyk says. \u201cMany people were involved, and it led to direct benefits for HMC and the elementary students.\u201d The Lead Project turned out to be a gateway to a more formal HMC community engagement program with a full-time staff member, Gabriela Gamiz. \u201cRight after the Vista project began, the Science Bus was formed. People saw the possibilities of such programs,\u201d says Van Ryswyk. Science Bus is a student run, volunteer organization at The Claremont Colleges, in which 5C students teach science to local fourth and fifth grade students.<\/p>\n

Van Ryswyk still considers community engagement to be a significant part of his work. As department chair, part of his job is to support community engagement among faculty, like biology and chemistry professor Karl Haushalter, who teaches Inside-Out courses, attended by both 5C \u201coutside\u201d and incarcerated \u201cinside\u201d students at local prisons.<\/p>\n

Over the years, Van Ryswyk\u2019s research interests have shifted. \u201cNow I\u2019m a little farther out on the material science side of things. My research is in solar energy conversion, and I see the value of that science and talking about where that fits into the larger societal picture,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n

Recently, a group of students interested in finding solutions to the problem of climate change invited Van Ryswyk and some of his chemistry and computer science colleagues to lunch. \u201cThey wanted to talk about how they could protect the planet both as students and in their careers,\u201d he says. \u201cTalking about how to incorporate this into their education brings up the Harvey Mudd Emphasis in Environmental Analysis, which came out of The Lead Project as a way to institutionalize ways to think about environmental issues in your education regardless of major.\u201d<\/p>\n

Students choosing the Emphasis in Environmental Analysis follow a coordinated program of study that allows them to address environmental issues from a range of perspectives in order to better understand the impact of their work.<\/p>\n

Societal impact and effective community engagement is a running theme in Van Ryswyk\u2019s teaching, perhaps now more than ever. \u201cWhen I talk to our first-year class, a lot of the units we\u2019re doing are energy-related\u2014where to get renewable energy, how to store it and the chemistry behind that. So it can sound like, \u2018Oh, if I just invent this silver bullet, everything will be fine,\u2019 but that may not be the case. There\u2019s a lot of science and engineering around climate change worth doing, but we also want students to think about the humanities and the arts, because even if you do have the silver bullet, you have to understand the psychology and politics and how to get society to bend in that direction.\u201d Science isn\u2019t the entire question, says Van Ryswyk, and maybe not even the biggest part of the question. \u201cHow do we change human behavior? How do you get people to confront a train that you can see 30 or 40 years down the track and do something about it now?,\u201d he asks. \u201cI want to get people to start thinking about using all the tools they have to take on the complicated issues.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In 2006, after a year of field and lab work, Hal Van Ryswyk, John Stauffer Professor of Chemistry, and the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-23","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-faculty-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/magazine.hmc.edu\/spring-2019\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}