One Spark Science Projects: Post-Game Analysis

Last week I had the amazing experience of serving as a science category juror at One Spark, the world's crowdfunding festival, here in Jacksonville. The competition among the science projects was intense, with the top project winning by a neuron. There were many projects deserving of funding and support, and our decision as jurors was very difficult, so (with my juror duties now concluded, and independently of One Spark and my fellow jurors whose analysis may be different than mine presented here) I thought I'd take this opportunity to describe some of these amazing projects.

Let's start with the three category finalists: How do you choose between neurologists & programmers curing Alzheimer's, exciting teachers developing an innovative learning space, and a 17-year-old building piezoelectric generators for remote sensors? It was not an easy decision, as...

• All three projects demonstrated tremendously refined expertise and qualifications for their proposed projects.
• All three creators have demonstrated success---including Cognitive Clubhouse's project leader being the second-grade teacher of the 17-year-old finalist! ("I told you I make science fun!" she shouted gladly during the Closing Ceremony.)
• All three creators presented specific plans for how to use their potential winnings---including the $10,000 we were to award.
• All three projects held promise for the two big deliverables scientists look for in any undertaking: Intellectual Merit (Will the proposed activities help advance human knowledge?) and Broader Impacts (Will the proposed activities bring practical benefits to society?). 
• All three creator teams communicated their ideas well and flourished under scrutinizing questions from the jurors.
• I found all three projects to be exciting ventures that I hope will succeed.

Even assembling these three finalists was a difficult decision. Although we ultimately agreed that these three projects came out on top, it was a tough competition among other well-developed and exciting projects, listed here as an unofficial Honorable Mention:

• Dragonfly Revival. This public awareness campaign is seeking to help prevent opioid overdose deaths.
• Sucralose Research. That artificial sweetener you're consuming may be zero calorie, but it also may be killing the good bacteria that live in your stomach.
• TruVitalZoo. This revolutionary project will enable zoo veterinarians to remotely measure vital signs of animals. Did you know you can't just walk up to a lion with a stethoscope? With TruVitals products, you can measure heart rate, respiration, and movement without having to approach the animal.
• The Wave Robber. This project presents a simple device that not only prevents coastal erosion but helps to rebuild shorelines in as little as a year.

Our juror results differed from the rankings by crowd vote, the top three of which included two aquariums and a community kitchen. Such a variety of awards is, I think, a reason One Spark's leadership decided to institute juror awards, and so I hope they'll continue to invite jurors to participate. These are three great projects and I hope to visit their final products some day soon!

So, what were your favorite projects?

Ideas That Have Ruined Me: "Going to Heaven"

I blame Andy Crouch for forever ruining my ability to not cringe when Christians refer to what will happen when they "go to heaven."

It was while reading his discussion in Culture Making of the end of the narrative in Revelation that it first really struck me that the end of the story takes place on the renewed earth, complete with a renewed city, renewed trees, gates leading out into the big wide world and letting the nations--still identified as nations--enter. It is to this renewed earth, John describes, that heaven comes down. At the end of the story, then, we don't go up to spend eternity with God in heaven; He comes down to spend eternity with us on earth.

I also blame Andy Crouch for the number of times I've kicked myself that I didn't see this sooner. After all, that's the story of the entire Bible! In Genesis 2 & 3, God comes down to visit Adam & Eve--they don't have to leave the earth behind. In John 1, Jesus comes and "pitches His tent with us" (literal wording for "dwelt among us").

So, why, I've wondered for the last couple years, do we sing so much about what will happen "when we all get to heaven," and how "this world has nothing for me," or even, "this world is not my home?" Granted: The second is likely referring to the world as the system of sin that governs human culture (at least, that's how I sing it--but even then, Crouch argues, we still need culture), but when I hear statements like the third, I can't help but conclude that the writer somehow thinks that this big 6000-km-radius ball of mostly molten iron with a surface gravitational acceleration of 32 ft/s^2 and atmosphere of primarily nitrogen is the wrong place for us. "This is my Father's world"--I want to shout--"and it's also mine!"

This earth is our home--and it will be, for all eternity. That's what makes it so amazing that God would move heaven here to be with us.

Granted, if you see me in church, I'll still sing most of the lines about "heaven," but only because "new earth" just doesn't fit rhythmically.  :-P

Engaging your professor

On this blog, the first and third Tuesday of each month are dedicated to presenting discussion geared toward undergraduate students, in a series called, "Undergraduate Corner."


How do you perceive your class meetings? Boring? Seemingly pointless? A requirement that you know you have to fulfill in order to get the grade you need to get the degree you want so that you can have a job you don't hate?

How do you perceive your textbooks? Pedantic? Dry? Verbose? A waste of $100+ that could have bought you real food for two weeks?

How do you perceive your homework assignments? Long? Unclear? A waste of trees and ink (or electricity, if conducted on-line)?

Have you ever considered how they're perceived by your professor? They are points of contact---communication from one human being to another---about the one thing in the world that she finds most interesting. They are the opening lines of what is supposed to be a dialogue between you and her.

Another way of looking at it is that they are the foundation of your class's culture. Whether you feel it or not, you are part of your class's culture. In each class, you are a member of a unique subsystem of human civilization that has never occurred before and will never be repeated again.

And here's the thing about communication and culture: They are always two-way. If your professor is the only participant who engages, the communication/culture project is stunted. It fails to be all that it was meant to be, and therefore your experience as a student fails to be what it was meant to be. If this communication/culture project is to be fulfilled, you have to be an engaged participant.

That's right; you have to (gasp) engage with your professor.

Before I get into what this looks like, let me paint another side of the picture for you: Few students engage their professor. Those that do find themselves in a position of respect in the professor's eyes, because they've come and broken the silence that has otherwise existed between them and the students, and---regardless of how preoccupied they are with their own research---nearly every professor appreciates this.

Now think of what it means for you as a Christian student to be the one student in your class to engage the professor. Imagine what it means for your witness for Christ to earn that respect in his eyes, all because you treated another human being how you would want to be treated. (Which, you just might eventually remind the professor, is something that Jesus taught.) Imagine how the kingdom might advance just because you took the time out to visit an instructor's office hours---oh yeah, and you just might get an insight into what's on the exam.

So, how do you engage a professor? The easiest way is to find out how she wants you to engage her. You can find this out in the syllabus or by simply asking.

1. Does your professor welcome questions in the few minutes before class while she is getting situated?
2. Does your professor welcome questions during class?
3. Does your professor welcome questions at the end of class?
4. When are your professor's office hours?
5. Does your professor mind if you continue to ask questions after the end of office hours?
6. Is your professor welcoming to students dropping by during non-office hours?
7. Is your professor willing to schedule an appointment with you outside of office hours?
8. Would your professor mind if you read the textbook or worked the homework in her office so that you can ask questions as you proceed?
9. What on-campus colloquia or seminars does your professor recommend?

All of these questions (which are all rather easy to ask and keep track of) will help you to understand the communication/culture paradigm that your professor has set up. And, asking them is your first (and easy) step toward engaging him. He'll already regard you with more respect and appreciation than before, and you just might begin to find class meetings, textbook-reading, and homework-completing more fulfilling and worthwhile.

How else have you found it to be beneficial to engage with your professor? If you're a professor or instructor, what tips would you give to students to help them engage better?

Is service part of our "morality?"

I've been in Matthew 25 a few times in the last couple weeks, having taught out of it in an adult education class at my church last week and hearing my pastor refer to it this past Sunday. In it, Jesus describes how the evidence of saving faith in a person is loving service to others as if they were Jesus, Himself. (Not that the loving service earns their way into God's grace, but that they inevitably engage in loving service because they have received God's grace.)

We often summarize this concept by saying that saving faith leads to obedience, or a godly morality.

But when we think of "morality," aren't we usually concerned with negative concepts, such as sexual purity, or not watching "bad movies," or not associating with "bad company" (which, even Paul affirmed, "corrupts good morals")?

Is loving service part of our "morality?"

Do we see feeding the hungry (literally and figuratively) or tending the sick (again, literally and figuratively) or visiting the lonely as "moral" actions?

After all, in Matthew 25, Jesus doesn't say, "Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. For all your friends went to see every Harry Potter movie, and you refused to go."

And isn't this positive morality of service what the world needs to see, far more than our restrictions on ourselves? Isn't this the kind of attitude that makes the difference for a university to be a welcoming place to students (who are very often hungry, sick, and lonely) instead of a standoffish wall of intimidation?

I'm off to Maryland for the American Association of Physics Teachers New Faculty Workshop! See you on Tuesday!

A Mathematical Model for the Questionable Sower

I recently revisited Jesus’ parable of the sower (Matthew 13:1-23) and noticed a few things I had never noticed before.  Most of these observations were inspired by Andy Crouch’s interpretation of the story in his Culture Making. I’ll summarize them here in three points:

1.       This sower is rather questionable. On looking at his sowing techniques, one finds that he must be very young, very blind, or very stupid.

2.       This parable of fruitfulness, fruitlessness, and faithfulness applies to our everyday lives, and not just Jesus’ telling of parables or our outright preaching of the gospel.

3.       This may seem anticlimactic, but I think it fleshes out the picture Jesus is painting here: The Sower’s method and result make for a very interesting math modeling problem.

The sower is rather questionable. He is throwing seeds everywhere, including places where, in retrospect, it’s obvious that the seed couldn’t grow. Seeds landing among thorns and rocks are one thing, but can’t this guy exercise just a little care to not let seeds land on the road? Nobody practices agriculture like this (and I’ve spent my share of time around agriculturalists, and they don’t tolerate foolishness)! Picturing this sower scattering seeds carelessly like this, he must be very young, very blind, or very stupid. These are very odd details for Jesus to leave out!

The analogy, of course, is that, in the ministries we feel that God calls us to, we don’t know which endeavors are going to bear fruit and which are going to die on the spot. We can certainly keep developing the areas that look promising, but we can’t know a priori which endeavors are going to succeed or flourish.

This parable of fruitfulness, fruitlessness, and faithfulness applies to our everyday lives. Jesus’ immediate interpretation of this parable is Himself proclaiming the gospel via parables. Only those whose hearts are prepared like good soil, he explains, can receive the parables and understand them such that they bear fruit. “To the one who has [i.e., the good soil], more will be given [i.e., fruit]” (v. 12). He also indicates that this applies when we proclaim the gospel, for which we certainly don’t know when we will see fruit.

But I also think that the parable applies to our everyday lives, as well. Our lives are to be expressions of the gospel—including not just our “moral decisions” and our “conversation,” as a fundamentalist would stress, but the endeavors we pursue. For example, when I teach physics, or when my wife works with her team to prepare a proposal, those pursuits are to be expressions of the gospel. Not that we insert the Four Laws (or Seven Truths for you Piper fans) into our materials, but that we pursue them out of hearts that have tasted the goodness of God and want to see that goodness propagated across creation in as many ways as possible. That is, after all, what we were created for: to spread the image of God across creation (Genesis 1:28-30). We all have a lot of room for creativity in our lives. Even the line cook slaving away at McDonald’s for minimum wage has an opportunity for creativity, in how he treats his fellow employees, or what he volunteers to do, or how he stacks boxes, etc.

In a sense, the seeds of this parable are like seeds of creativity; we don’t know what will come of our endeavors, but (to use the old adage) we won’t find out unless we try.

The Sower’s method and result make for a very interesting math modeling problem. Suppose, for example, that the Sower starts out with 100 seeds (100 is easy to work with percentages). Because the seeds that land on the good soil bear a minimum of a 30-fold return, he only needs 4 out of the 100 seeds to land on the good soil in order to end up with more than he had before—that’s a 4% success rate. In our mindset, that seems unsuccessful, but in God’s mindset, it’s a tremendous success.

What that means is that when I feel discouraged in what I perceive to be a weak progression of the gospel in the world around me, I have to remember that God takes what looks like a few feeble seeds and turns them into a new generation of fruit, beyond what I could have imagined or thought.

Doubly Marginalized, Part 4: The Advantages of Being in the Corner

Christians in the university very often feel like outsiders in both their churches and their institutions. In this series, I take a look at the different aspects of this situation of being doubly marginalized.

My previous post showed a little of the downsides of life in the corner, but I think the benefits far outweigh the struggles.

1. Christians in the university get to view God's world in detail and trace that view back to Him in praise.
2. We're able to offer a compassion and care to our students that outlasts and outshines that of our colleagues.
3. Each semester, we have the opportunity to serve as Christ's ambassadors to a new generation of developing culture-makers.
4. We can offer unique viewpoints or expressions of Scriptural truths that are often missed by clergy.
5. We can provide logic and insight to help church issues.
6. We can live a unified or non-compartmentalized life.
7. We live out daily the interaction between faith and culture.
8. Our schedules are often very flexible, increasing our availability to God's service and to our families.
9. We develop and present the academic framework through which our society views and responds to reality.
10. We are a prominent public voice for the reasonableness of the Christian faith.

The list could go on. Based on these thoughts, there are two things that I wish would develop in the church.

First, I would like to see local churches utilize their local Christian faculty more. This could mean encouraging college students (current or aspiring) to talk with them, or hosting a discussion panel, or hosting seminars about their thoughts of how their studies relate to their faith, or encouraging the Christian faculty to publish in Christian literature. What kinds of ministry activities have you seen that have successfully brought out the gifts and experiences of Christian faculty?

Second, I would love to see Christians of every vocation develop their own personal list like the one above. Just ask yourself, "How could God use me in my position in the world?" It's not a question of how many co-workers or clients you can share the gospel with in one week; it's not a matter of analyzing the moral quality or "holiness" of what you do; and it's not a matter of how much tithe money you generate each week. It's a matter of asking how God has called you to honor Him by making a difference in the lives of others, what the Old Testament calls "pursuing peace (Hebrew: shalom)." Perhaps if all Christians started looking at life that way, none of us would feel like we were in the corner.