In 2018, the ASA conference featured Francis Collins and was hosted at Gordon College near Boston. ASA and ESN collaborated to provide transportation for local grad students in the Boston area, and in time that led to a collaboration between the local ASA chapter in Boston and one of the InterVarsity Harvard grad fellowship groups. I’ll let Jeff Banks tell you more about that local collaboration. If you would like to find a faith/science speaker through the ASA network or are interested in other local collaborations, please get in touch.
–Hannah Eagleson, Assistant Director, InterVarsity Emerging Scholars Network
Last year a few students in our GSAS Christian Community attended a conference hosted by American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), an international network of Christians in science. What is interesting about ASA is that they don’t have stances about many “hot button” issues, which allows them to have dialogue and debate about important questions that Christians face in the sciences and that all of us face in life.
The students who attended the ASA conference helped facilitate a partnership with ASA, such that we held two joint-meetings on campus during the spring. The speaker at the first meeting was Dr. Randy Isaac, the former executive director of ASA who spent his career at IBM, ultimately becoming Research Vice President of Systems, Science, and Technology. The lecturer at the second meeting was Dr. Craig Story, Professor of Biology at Gordon College.
Not only did they talk about interesting subjects, but we also had students join us from MIT and other schools for these presentations. It was a great way to engage important topics while also reaching out to the community more broadly.
--Jeff Banks, Harvard Grad InterVarsity Campus Minister
Interested in Collaborating with Local ASA Groups to Host Events or Speakers? Contact Hannah Eagleson.
At InterVarsity’s Emerging Scholars Network, we are always looking for ways to offer national networking opportunities for Christian scholars. Since 2016, we have been collaborating with a professional society for Christians in science, the American Scientific Affiliation, to launch and grow a student/early career track at their annual faith/science conference. This initiative has been deeply encouraging, providing a national in person gathering for emerging Christians in science and connecting students with mentoring opportunities during the conference and beyond. We often hear stories of how attending transformed a student’s experience of working in science as a believer, and the student attendance at the meeting has grown significantly. The ASA has many InterVarsity alumni and faculty advisors among its membership, so it’s always a pleasure to reconnect with them as well, and many serve in our early career track panels and speed mentoring sessions.
