Tuesday Sep 06 2022
"Women in Science & Humanities" grant from the John Templeton Foundation
Tuesday, September 6, 2022 at 2:40PM
Dr. Wickman was just awarded a two-year planning grant from the John Templeton Foundation entitled "Women in Science & Humanities: Creating a Mentoring Community of Women at the Interface of Science & Religion." The project is described in the Executive Summary below:
This planning grant is designed to explore the felt needs of women within the S&R community, and to plan a program to encourage and support more active female participation in S&R work, whether at the practitioner level (e.g., instructors doing faith-integration work required for teaching at faith-based institutions), or at a more scholarly research-based level of expertise in a specific area.
Phase 1 of the grant will investigate fundamental concerns as well as potential remediation strategies for women engaging in S&R work by analyzing data that will be collected through interviews, surveys and literature reviews. Phase 2 will use this data to plan a WISH Mentorship Program. The program will include interdisciplinary opportunities aimed at engaging and mentoring female scholars at various stages of their careers who are interested in exploring the S&R field using both humanities and sciences.
The program will provide opportunities to explore data-driven questions about God, humanity, nature and technology considering interdisciplinary perspectives. The personal growth, practice and community fostered by being in the program will help women fully engage in S&R activities, impacting their own spheres of influence. The program will increase participation in important conversations in a way that more accurately reflects the diversity of our culture. Doing so will draw a greater cross-section of public attention to S&R work, and in turn build more trust in the scientific enterprise.
The ultimate impact of this work will be to achieve a more equitable gender balance within the S&R community, as well as in the scholarship it produces. Broader societal impacts of this project will include increased diversity of voices speaking into culturally relevant questions relating to science and faith; greater public engagement with such questions; improved public perception of the value of constructive dialog between science and faith; increased public scientific literacy.
Leslie W.
Tuesday Jul 13 2021
The Space Race and Exploring the Unknown
Tuesday, July 13, 2021 at 10:23AM
Original article posted at BioLogos.org
For those of us born before the late 1960's, it was an event we will never forget. Like a handful of other history-shaping events that have taken place over that same timeframe, I'll never forget where I was when I heard the news of the Apollo 11 moon landing. I was a young kid at summer camp in Washington state when Neil Armstrong's crackly message from the moon was broadcast to the world: "That's one small step for man—one giant leap for mankind." An estimated 500 million people around the world vicariously experienced this historic event.
This significant incident inspired a generation of STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering & Math)-oriented kids—myself included—to pursue the education required to support NASA's space program. For me, that path involved pursuing graduate studies in aerospace and mechanical engineering at Stanford University, and working with NASA on spacesuit design for future Moon and Mars missions. I also spent more than a decade doing astronaut training and working as a spaceflight test crewmember with Lockheed Martin on NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and International Space Station programs. I got to do a lot of really fun simulation and training activities, including flying jets, jumping out of planes, diving in neutral buoyancy tanks, working in spacesuits, and flying aboard NASA's KC135 "Vomit Comet."
As we reflect on the Apollo program, it's worth noting some of the events that—had they gone differently—could have led to very different outcomes on the world stage. The Space Race (1957-1975) between the US and the Soviet Union was an outgrowth of the Cold War. During this era, each of the two countries attempted to assert its prowess (scientifically, technologically, and economically) in various domains including land, sea and air, and eventually extending into space. In some ways, the American public viewed the Cold War and the Space Race in particular as a battle between good (represented by democracy) and evil (represented by communism).
The Soviet launch in 1957 of Sputnik, the first ever artificial earth-orbiting satellite, followed by Yuri Gagarin's historic flight in 1961 as the first human to fly in space seemed to give the Soviets an early edge in the Space Race. These Soviet "firsts" prompted President John F. Kennedy's famous 1962 "we choose to go to the moon" speech at Rice University in Houston. In it, JFK pledged his commitment to America's technological progress and established space exploration as a national priority, affirming the role of NASA, which had just been established in 1958, and effectively kicking off the Mercury, Gemini and Apollo human spaceflight missions.
On July 21, 1969, the same day as the successful Apollo 11 moonwalk, news broke about Russia's Luna 15 unmanned spacecraft crashing into the moon, emphasizing the challenges of any moon landing. In a similar way, the Apollo 13 mission just a year later, was plagued with a whole series of technical problems, and nearly turned into a loss-of-life category disaster. The Apollo 13 moon landing was aborted, and Mission Control's focus turned to solving the complex problems standing between the ailing spacecraft and a safe return to earth. Back on planet Earth, Congress passed a resolution asking Americans to pray for the astronauts' safe return home.
Personally, I think it's in our DNA to explore. In fact, I might even go so far as to assert that it's part of our Imago Dei created-ness. It seems to me that wonder, awe, inspiration and exploration are deeply connected. Having had the privilege of working on the Hubble Space Telescope, I've always been inspired by the amazing images of God's creation that it has captured over the years, as well as by simply gazing at the sky on clear, dark nights. For all of human history, the night sky has had a similar effect on people, making us think, feel and wonder about life's big questions.
Proverbs 25:2 reads, "It is the glory of God to conceal a thing; but the honor of kings to search it out." It's in our innate human nature to want to try to figure things out—to understand everything we possibly can. Is it possible that the awe and wonder we feel when we look at the night sky are at least in part purposed by God to engage us in this interplay, to lure us into searching out not only the wonders of His creation, but also to beckon us to search out God Himself as the source of all creation?
Looking back across five decades to the actual day of that first moon landing, that little girl at summer camp never would have expected to be in the middle of this important conversation involving science, technology, space exploration and faith, but our great God is full of serendipitous surprises, and following him is always an adventure!
Leslie W.