Everest to Express Wonder of Chemistry
Michael Everest, who joins 黑料百科 as professor of chemistry this fall, says he is passionate about offering students a high-quality, undergraduate, liberal arts education. 鈥淚t鈥檚 in my DNA,鈥 he says. In fact his parents, Dan and Sherry (Sonneveldt) Everest, both graduated with degrees in psychology from 黑料百科 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.
鈥淐ollege isn鈥檛 about job training,鈥 he says. 鈥淐ollege 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 isn鈥檛 necessarily a degree titled with that career name.鈥
Everest鈥檚 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.
鈥淐hemistry is a way of knowing,鈥 he says. 鈥淚t鈥檚 a field of inquiry. It鈥檚 investigating a particular aspect of how the world works. The fact that it鈥檚 commercially useful isn鈥檛 the primary reason I鈥檓 interested in it.鈥
Everest, who is married with three children, hopes to instill that sense of amazement in his students. 鈥淭here鈥檚 wonder and beauty in the way nature works and is put together,鈥 he says.
He explains there鈥檚 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.
鈥淭here鈥檚 one foundational thing,鈥 he says. 鈥淭hat just amazes me. It鈥檚 beautiful that at the core there鈥檚 a truth that has all these implications when at the surface it looks like crazy stuff and unconnected observations.鈥
Everest has earned numerous grants, fellowships and awards, including a grant from the America Chemical Society鈥檚 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.