Everest to Express Wonder of Chemistry
Michael Everest, who joins 做厙惇蹋app as professor of chemistry this fall, says he is passionate about offering students a high-quality, undergraduate, liberal arts education. Its in my DNA, he says. In fact his parents, Dan and Sherry (Sonneveldt) Everest, both graduated with degrees in psychology from 做厙惇蹋app in 1967, Sherry with a double major in education. Michael, a Wheaton College alumnus, earned his doctorate from Stanford University and most recently was professor of chemistry at George Fox University, where he taught for the past decade.
College isnt about job training, he says. College is learning about the human condition and about the world and how it works. You can specialize and do job training later. The best preparation for a particular career isnt necessarily a degree titled with that career name.
Everests research leans toward the physics end of chemistry, focusing on the use of lasers in chemistry. He returned to Oregon from Heraklion, Greece, in June 2010, following a one-year sabbatical at the Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, where he researched the interaction of polarized light with matter.
Chemistry is a way of knowing, he says. Its a field of inquiry. Its investigating a particular aspect of how the world works. The fact that its commercially useful isnt the primary reason Im interested in it.
Everest, who is married with three children, hopes to instill that sense of amazement in his students. Theres wonder and beauty in the way nature works and is put together, he says.
He explains theres a single principle that describes why every single chemical reaction goes forward instead of backward and why ice freezes at zero and water boils at 100 degrees Celsius.
Theres one foundational thing, he says. That just amazes me. Its beautiful that at the core theres a truth that has all these implications when at the surface it looks like crazy stuff and unconnected observations.
Everest has earned numerous grants, fellowships and awards, including a grant from the America Chemical Societys Petroleum Research Fund and five faculty research grants from George Fox. He has contributed scholarly articles to Journal of Chemical Physics, Journal of Chemical Education and Review of Scientific Instruments to name a few.