Courtesy photo
Photo by Joshua Daugherty
at home at hendrix:
Highlighting Alumni Faculty and Staff
John Steward ’94
www.hendrix.edu
change in family routine and pace” but a nanny shared with a Hendrix classmate and colleague “brought sanity,” he said. As lab manager, Steward brings similar sanity and dutiful dad-like oversight to the physics program, organizing labs for general and modern physics courses, assisting faculty and students with research, and overseeing the lab program’s budget. He also teaches a general physics lab section. Research equipment is newer and much better than when he was an undergraduate, and there are multiple stations to accommodate growing classes, he says, adding that classrooms and labs are becoming increasingly digital with iPads and new Arduino microcontrollers. And, if he can’t procure it Steward will fabricate it. As the de facto machine shop manager, he often makes apparatus for demonstrations. He hopes to inspire such ingenuity in Hendrix students too. Last year, Hendrix purchased its first 3D printer [see Campus News p.8]. Steward collaborated with theatre professor Cheri DeVol ’90 on the grant proposal to fund the printer. Devol teaches a computer-aided design (CAD) course and anticipates using it for set and prop design work. Steward can envision making 3D models of campus and other creative student projects. The 3D printer is a cornerstone of what Steward hopes will be a dedicated “maker space” on campus. Maker spaces are innovative think spaces or incubators where students and faculty can put ideas into action. “We are always looking for ways to better engage students and move beyond just the blackboard,” he says, adding that such teaching and learning spaces are a natural extension of the College’s engaged learning ethos and Odyssey program. Photo by Joshua Daugherty
After hiking the Appalachian Trail, earning a master’s degree in engineering from Vanderbilt University, and working on the human genome project for a biotech company, the journey of John Steward ’94 would seemingly be complete. Fortunately for Hendrix faculty and students, his Odyssey brought him back to campus in 2010 as the lab manager for the physics department. “Coming back to Hendrix was like reconnecting with an old friend,” said Steward, a mathematics major. A Sherwood, Ark., native, Steward was already familiar with Hendrix by the time he was a freshman through his mother Dana Fowler Steward ’65 and from having attended United Methodist youth conferences on campus. Steward’s student experience started with a backpacking trip to Devil’s Den State Park for pre-orientation. He also decided to join the swim team. Like his pre-or trip, the swim team offered an instant new group of friends, including Dr. Jeff Marotte ’94, who was Steward’s roommate for three years in Martin Hall, where Steward was hall president his senior year. During his junior year, Steward led a group of new freshmen on a backpacking trip back to Devil’s Den, alongside his future wife Dr. Becky Keeter Steward ’94, a chemistry major, Hays Scholar, and President’s Medal winner. The couple married in August 1995. After graduation, Steward hiked the upper 1,000 miles of the Appalachian Trail from Harpers Ferry, W. Va., to Maine. Becky hiked with him the first month before she started medical school at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., where they lived for nine years. They moved to Little Rock in June 2003 when their son Jack was born. Becky joined Arkansas Pathology Associates and began work as a pathologist at St. Vincent Infirmary. With little or no biotech market in central Arkansas, Steward decided to focus on being a stay-at-home father to Jack, now 10, and Violet, who is now 6. When he went back to work in summer 2010, it was “a
Left: Steward and fellow Martin Hall resident Dr. Jeff Marotte ’94 host a coffeehouse event in Hulen Hall. Middle: Steward works with physics major Claude Shyaka ’16 from Rwanda on a project using the College’s new 3D printer.
Story by Rob O’Connor ’95, Managing Editor
Hendrix Magazine | Fall 2013 13