By Kate Quiñones
CNA Staff August 10, 2024 / 06:00 AM
At a small liberal arts college in Bismarck, North Dakota, Catholic science students have spent the summer researching the genetics of blindness in fruit flies.
Students attend daily Mass together, share community dinners, and discuss their vocations and how to follow Christ’s call in their lives—all as part of a Summer University of Mary Research Experience (SURVE) .
SURVE director David Ronderos, a neuroscientist and professor of biology at UMary, says the program was designed to help students embrace faith and science.
The research itself – a ten-year project undertaken by Ronderos – is expected to be published within a few months.
Psychology sophomore Margaret Talafuse has personal experience with blindness.
“I actually have a degenerative eye disease, so I’m fighting blindness now,” she told CNA in an interview. “So being a part of this lab is very near and dear to my heart because it touches me deeply. It’s been really interesting to be able to not sit on the sidelines with what I’m doing and be part of the research.”
SURVE is designed to train students in laboratory techniques and develop their understanding of practical science, while also helping them to have “a holistic approach to one’s life, that is a Christian life and also a scientific life” and “to do God’s will in the world.” Ronderos told CNA in an interview.
“We started the program in 2017 and it was out of a desire to both offer students the opportunity to engage in the activity of doing science and also to do it in such a way that we also offer them a formation. he said.
“[We wanted] to form them to see this activity of doing science within a wider context: to see it as a way of living a Christian calling from God,” Ronderos added.
This year, there are four different faculty at SURVE leading their own independent research projects, with 15 students divided between them. Other topics of study in addition to the genetics of blindness include DNA repair, electrochemical characteristics of cancer progression, and angiogenesis and vein patterning.
Faith and reason
Austin Link, a senior studying biology and psychology in the pre-med track, said the emphasis on both faith and science was “one of the most important reasons” he had for joining SURVE.
“I think what’s really nice about the SURVE program is that there is intentional time for conversation,” Link said.
These themes of faith and reason, purpose and calling, come up often in weekly group discussions, Link noted.
(Story continues below)
Sign up for our daily newsletter
“Every day, we find time for Mass,” Link added. “Nothing is ever planned during Mass. To be able to do a morning full of research and then go and receive the Eucharist and then go and talk about science from a Catholic perspective is an opportunity we have every day.”
Ronderos said this “broader theological perspective” can give science meaning and purpose.
“You are thinking about the spiritual, immaterial realities and also the sacramental nature of the world and reality and at the same time, having an appreciation for the beauty and goodness of God’s creation as you seek to investigate and understand the works of God. in nature”, he said. “[It’s a] beautiful holistic approach and an integrated life that brings a lot of joy.”
“It really inspires me to take my faith in my career,” said Talafuse, who is studying in the pre-med track and hopes to be a psychiatrist.
“I think a Catholic Scientist has a very unique calling in how they’re able to counter that movement. [of modernism] without necessarily going all the way to the other side and being like, ‘Oh, just trust,'” she explained. “The Catholic Scientist has that unique calling where they are able to say: We can have reason and we can have faith, but we must have both in union.”
SURVE helps lay the “groundwork” for integrating faith and reason, Talafuse explained.
“I can integrate faith and reason; I can bring that into my career field and I can actually help other people with that by doing what I love,” she said. “It’s been really great to be able to experience it here and learn how to do it.”
Difference in SURVE
The 10-week training also emphasizes discernment and calling during weekly workshop discussions.
“If you understand what God is calling you to, this is where you will ultimately be happy,” Ronderos explained.
Talafuse said she hadn’t “really thought about what it means to carve out a career” until she attended SURVE.
“It really changed my view of discernment because it really showed me that discernment is more than just marriage or religious life,” she explained. “You can pick up on a lot of really small things in your life, the little decisions you make, and I think SURVE just showed me how to do that in a more practical way, and I was really grateful for that.”
Link says discernment is an “important thing” he learned over the course of SURVE.
Link explained that he thought of discernment as “something really intentional, where you sit and meditate and think and ponder.”
“But often, that’s not the case,” he continued. “And being present in the moment every day when you come in to explore and understand these little things in life: where I feel gratitude, where I feel fulfillment, where I feel at peace with what I’m doing — that’s all part of this picture distinctive.”
“To be able to put those pieces of the puzzle together over a 10-week course where I’m integrated with science and confident that this is what I want to do is a really rare and unique opportunity,” Link added. .
Link’s experience at SURVE has helped him discern his future plans.
“I’ve made some pretty big decisions about what I’m going to do with my life in the next year, year and a half, where I’m going to apply to school, what I want to do,” he said.
“And I feel, if anything, that the last 10 weeks of SURVE have really helped me realize that I was made for science and I was made for God.”
Kate Quiñones is a staff writer for the Catholic News Agency and a member of the Fix College. She has been published by the Wall Street Journal, Denver Catholic Register and CatholicVote, and she graduated from Hillsdale College. She lives in Colorado with her husband.