story and photos by john pierce
Louisiana layman Kenny Crump is a serving scientist
R
USTON, La. — Risk assessment may not capture the attention of many, but Baptist layman Kenny Crump finds such data intriguing. A scientist who majored in electrical engineering at Louisiana Tech, he did graduate studies in mathematics at the University of Denver and then Montana State University where he earned a Ph.D. Kenny met his wife, Shirley, through the Baptist Student Union at Louisiana Tech in Ruston where they returned to raise their family. Kenny taught and did research at his alma mater. However, his growing interest in risk assessment was soon followed by the realization that the field was wide open for research. So Kenny took a one-year leave from teaching to make “a bigger impact on the world” — and became a visiting scientist at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS) in North Carolina. “I found myself doing research in the field of risk assessment and developing statistical models that could be used to set standards for exposure to toxic chemicals,” he said. “The field was undergoing rapid changes at that time, and I was fortunate to become engaged at an opportune time.” The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) adopted some of the methods Kenny had developed, and he began getting requests to work on various projects and provide consultation. So in 1980 he left his position at Louisiana Tech to begin a consulting company based in Ruston, and traveled widely. Seven years later he sold his company to a Washington, D.C., consulting firm, but continued to work for the firm for another 20 years. Kenny then returned to Louisiana Tech for three years as a research scientist on projects funded by EPA grants. Today he works out of his home on select projects that interest him. He has made a lasting mark in the important field of determining the impact of toxins on human life. He was the keynote speaker for an annual meeting of the Society for Risk Analysis, which 34 | Feature
Shirley and Kenny Crump
Data and Discipleship commemorated a seminal paper he had written many years earlier. To date, he has authored 135 scientific papers in peer-reviewed scientific literature and has served on a number of science advisory boards including the Science Advisory Board of the National Center for Toxicological Research, the Science Advisory Board of EPA, the Science Advisory Panel of the Mickey Leland National Urban Air Toxics Research Center, and the Board of Scientific Counselors for the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. And while Kenny has also served on several committees of the National Academies of Science, he has not spent his life squirreled away in a lab or at his computer.
For 11 summers, Kenny and Shirley taught English classes in China. One year his class consisted of 10 pastors from some of the largest congregations in the nation. “Shirley has a passion for helping internationals and has taught an English class every Wednesday at our church for the past 25 years,” he said. Also the Crumps are engaged in a Sunday school class for internationals that Kenny started in 1993 with Dan Erickson who had come to Louisiana Tech as director of international affairs. For the past seven years, Kenny has served as the teacher — with the class now using the Nurturing Faith Bible Studies within Baptists Today for the attentive students who August 2013