Class offers new ways of looking at world

Preparing students for gainful employment and an education that sustains and nurtures their faith in Christ

by Lisa Kochanowski, Assistant Director of Communications

John Biddle joins the Holy Cross College community this year as an assistant professor of physics teaching two physics sequences – one for people planning to study engineering and the physical sciences, and another for people planning to study life sciences, including those in preparation for careers in health-related fi elds.

His education background is extensive, including a master’s degree in education from the University of Notre Dame and a Ph.D. in physics from the University of Maryland.

“During my Ph. D. work at Maryland, I studied phase transitions and critical phenomena, focusing on supercooled water in particular,” said Biddle about his background. “During that time, I was also a teaching assistant for Maryland’s physics education research group. In graduate school, I became particularly interested in non-equilibrium statistical and thermal physics, and biological phenomena presented, as they do now, some of the most interesting problems in that fi eld. So, after I graduated from Maryland, I worked in the Department of Systems Biology at Harvard Medical School.” When deciding to get involved in teaching, he wanted to be part of a place that off ered a well-rounded educational experience for students.

“I wanted to teach at a college or university that valued teaching, and I wanted to be part of a college or university that helped its students to become better people. I was especially hoping for an opportunity to teach at a Catholic university that took the Christian formation and education of its students seriously. Also, I grew up in Michigan and had been looking for an opportunity to come back to the M idwest, and my wife and I both knew people in South Bend and had a very good impression of the town as a place we’d like to live. So, I was really fortunate that Holy Cross was hiring when my research fellowship ended: it struck both of us as a perfect fi t,” notes Biddle.

His career path choice came from a love of physics in his teens.

“In high school I liked physics and I had a great physics teacher, so I studied physics in college. In college I liked it even more, and I also liked teaching, so I taught high school physics for a while. I felt like there was more to learn though, so I went to graduate school. That led to an opportunity to do research at Harvard, which was a blast; research is learning, but on a whole new level, and I got to work with some really top-notch scientists, but I missed teaching. So, for a long time now, I have found both learning and teaching physics to be enjoyable and rewarding, and have been lucky enough to have the opportunity to pursue these activities as a career,” said Biddle.

He hopes to bring a new way of looking at the world through his teaching at the College.

“I hope that by teaching students physics, I can give them new ways of looking at the world and at certain problems; help them see science in the broader context of human knowledge and wisdom; prepare them for gainful employment; and do all of this as part of an education that sustains and nurtures their faith in Christ. I’d also like to work out some of the implications of my earlier projects at Harvard and keep contributing to the ongoing research into non-equilibrium statistical physics, and in particular, the physics of biological systems,” commented Biddle.