Ready for Takeoff: A Christ-Centered Aerospace Engineering Program

msk23@calvin.edu — Tue, 24 Sep 2024 11:36:17 +0000

Ready for Takeoff: A Christ-Centered Aerospace Engineering Program msk23@calvin.edu Tue, 09/24/2024 - 07:36

Ken Visser’s fascination with aero is palpable.

“My enthusiasm for aero is just over the hill. I love it!,” said Visser.

It all started in 1969.

“When I was five years old my dad made me watch something significant,” said Visser, referencing the Apollo 11 mission to the moon. “From that point forward, I collected everything on space. I wrote letters to NASA, and I received lots of material back from them, including pictures.”

Building A Career

Then, in seventh grade, Visser was allowed to participate in a science fair where he built a model of Launch Complex 39, where they launched Apollo missions, on an 8’ x 4’ sheet of plywood. He realized if he was going to enter the science fair to win, he’d need to know everything he could possibly be asked. So, he learned as much as he could, and the more he learned, the more fascinated he became.

Fast forward 40 years and Visser has had quite the career in aerospace, including working at NASA and Boeing, and for the past couple of decades as a professor of aerospace engineering at Clarkson University, a small private university in upstate New York.

However, over the past couple of years, God was stirring up something in Visser’s heart.

Called to a New Mission

“I believe God was calling me to do specific kingdom work based on all the experience He’d given me up to this point,” said Visser. “Forty years ago, when I was graduating high school and wanted to study aerospace engineering at a Reformed university, I couldn’t find one.”

So, four decades later, Visser scanned the higher education landscape yet again and what he discovered was all too familiar. “It was pretty much the same as it was back then.”

So, he contacted six Christ-centered universities in the United States and asked them if they were interested in starting an aerospace program.

“All six were interested,” said Visser. “But only two could commit the resources to do it.”

One of those two was �ƴ��ɸ��̳.

The ultimate deciding factor? “Calvin was the closest to my wife’s family in upstate New York. We can make it there in a day’s drive.”

Launching a New Venture

So Visser is preparing to launch something new at �ƴ��ɸ��̳: an aerospace engineering program. And his “why” is deep.

“I only have so many years on this earth, and I wanted to help provide an opportunity for young Christian men and women to study aerospace engineering in a Christian environment,” said Visser. “These four years are very formative for students and, as God is sovereign over everything we do, including aerospace engineering, providing the opportunity to learn in a Christian environment is a great opportunity”

Visser says he thinks it’s absolutely invaluable for someone who is a Christian to study their vocation in a Christian environment where they can discover how to integrate their Christian faith with their field, how to design something and do it in a Christian way, and to ask what does designing something in a Christian way even mean?

“Engineering students aren’t coming to Calvin to go out into the world to be traditional missionaries, per se. They want to be engineers,” said Visser. “Yet, they are discovering how to serve God and be a missionary as a Christian engineer and that concept takes time to develop. So, offering the environment to do that formative work is absolutely crucial.”

Growing Interest

While the aerospace concentration won’t be added officially to Calvin’s nationally respected engineering program until Fall 2025, Visser is already fielding quite a bit of interest.

“A family came to visit recently and their son, who is in his senior year of high school, walked into my office and I could tell right away his enthusiasm for aero was just like mine at that age,” said Visser.

He said the young man’s eyes lit up when he saw all the artifacts in Visser’s office, including a photo of lunar module commander for Apollo 13, Fred Haise, who Visser had spent several hours with on one occasion.

“It’s a surprise in a way, but it’s like you are unleashing this unbridled enthusiasm, similar to what I had when I was that age when I was wanting to do something with rockets and spaceships. Students are saying, ‘Wow, I can do this at Calvin?’ And I can say, ‘yes, you can do that at Calvin.”

An Ideal Launching Pad

While Visser will have a leading role in launching the new aerospace engineering program, he isn’t the only professor with a background in aero. In fact, he joins a program that has a number of faculty with aerospace experience, including Matt Heun, who worked with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory before teaching at Calvin, and Fred Haan, whose specialty is experimental aerodynamics, to name a couple.

“This is a terrifically strong engineering program,” said Visser. “The academically excellent, Christ-centered focus of this ABET-accredited program provides an ideal launching pad for students who want to pursue the many paths an aerospace engineering degree opens up.”

Opening a World of Opportunities

And Visser says there are a lot of paths one can take inside aerospace.

“For instance, aerodynamics, propulsion, stability and control—how to coordinate and move things around, structures of an aircraft of a satellite—that kind of stuff,” said Visser. “And it doesn’t have to be airplanes or rockets. At Boeing, I worked with an America’s Cup team in the area of hydrodynamics. It encompasses vehicle design in auto racing to the development of wind turbines for renewable energy. I’ve recommended students go work for Ferrari in the wind tunnel in Italy. You can be anything from a flight test engineer to a liaison engineer—the person who talks with those on the factory floor and with the engineers to improve processes. There are so many opportunities.”

For more details about the program, contact Gayle Ermer, engineering department chair.

Tue, 09/24/2024 - 12:00

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