Fac­ulty Pro­file: Dr. Bryan Isaac Re­turns to Sci­ence De­part­ment Chair

Bryan Isaac, Ph.D., has been on staff at Bethel for longer than most stu­dents on cam­pus have been alive. He came to the col­lege in 1997 with an in­ter­est in a chem­istry po­si­tion. He thought the in­te­gra­tion of chem­istry and Chris­tian­ity was im­por­tant, and he had the mo­ti­va­tion to do it. 

When he is not teach­ing chem­istry to Bethel stu­dents, he and his wife, Sue, en­joy trav­el­ing the United States and Canada bird­watch­ing. They have been mar­ried 33 years and have a 25-year-old son with a pas­sion for pho­tog­ra­phy. Isaac says the only state he has yet to visit is Hawaii.

Grow­ing up with a fa­ther who taught, Isaac al­ways saw him­self as a teacher as well. But, like most col­lege stu­dents, he saw that ca­reer path ad­just as he stud­ied.

“I was think­ing I would be teach­ing math, so I started as a math ma­jor,” Isaac said. “And I al­ways thought teach­ing high school and, within a week or two of go­ing to col­lege it was like, ‘no, teach col­lege.’”

Af­ter mak­ing the de­ci­sion to teach col­lege, he then de­cided he wanted to study chem­istry in­stead of math. His back­ground had mainly been in an­a­lyt­i­cal chem­istry, but once he filled the open­ing for teach­ing Gen­eral Chem­istry at Bethel, he fell in love with it. 

Isaac prefers the kinds of re­la­tion­ships that can form be­tween stu­dent and pro­fes­sor in a col­lege set­ting. And at Bethel, be­cause spir­i­tu­al­ity is al­ready in­te­grated into the class­room, he feels he has been able to learn about stu­dents on a per­sonal level as well as aca­d­e­mic. 

“Peo­ple learn more when they feel safer, and some of that is the re­la­tion­ship with the pro­fes­sor,” said Isaac.

The po­si­tion of di­vi­sion chair is not a new po­si­tion for Isaac, he said. His sec­ond year at Bethel, he took the po­si­tion. But, at that time, he over­saw sub­jects in­clud­ing math, physics, chem­istry, bi­ol­ogy, and com­puter sci­ence. He was chair of this di­vi­sion un­til 2005, when it was re­struc­tured. Then, he be­came chair of just chem­istry, physics, and en­gi­neer­ing. 

Di­vi­sion Chairs han­dle over­see­ing the sched­ul­ing of courses and mak­ing sure fac­ulty in the di­vi­sion have a rea­son­able work­load. Be­cause they over­see sched­ul­ing classes for the next se­mes­ter, their time is spent think­ing into the fu­ture.

They also en­sure that the pro­gram is run­ning well and meet­ing the spe­cific needs of the stu­dents. Chairs ad­dress com­plaints, make sure stan­dards are met, and as­sist in bud­get­ing for their di­vi­sion. 

“I al­ways thought it was im­por­tant to de­velop lead­er­ship in­side the de­part­ment,” Isaac said. 

For this rea­son, the di­vi­sion chair nor­mally cy­cled through fac­ulty about every 3 years. He liked to see each per­son in fac­ulty de­velop so that, when the op­por­tu­nity arose for a new chair, any­one could step into the roll ca­pa­bly.

And that’s ex­actly what Dr. Kroa did. But now as the po­si­tion be­came avail­able and pre­sented it­self to him, he de­cided to take it again.

Isaac's ad­vice to stu­dents is to think back to when they made the de­ci­sion to come to col­lege. 

“There’s a lot of ben­e­fit to think­ing ahead,” Isaac said. “Don’t wait un­til you grad­u­ate to work on the next part.” 

He also wants to re­mind se­niors to root them­selves in their spir­i­tu­al­ity. Bethel, be­ing a Chris­t­ian fa­cil­ity, makes it easy to hang on to that area of your life. But when you leave, find­ing a church that has foun­da­tional ground­ing but also chal­lenges you is im­por­tant.

And for stu­dents who will soon be plan­ning their classes for next se­mes­ter, Isaac said to pay at­ten­tion to the elec­tives you choose. Many of them can ben­e­fit a stu­dent in other ar­eas of their life, po­ten­tially ar­eas not re­lated to their ca­reer.

His last piece of ad­vice for every­one is sim­ple.

“Keep read­ing,” Isaac said. “There’s a lot of great stuff out there in books. And keep your brain en­gaged.” 

Au­thor's note:

Com­ing in as a bi­ol­ogy ma­jor, Isaac was the first staff mem­ber at Bethel I met. I had al­ways been told in high school that col­lege pro­fes­sors were cold and that they did­n’t pay any mind to your suc­cess. That was not the feel­ing I re­ceived from even my first con­ver­sa­tion with Isaac. In fact, it was quite the op­po­site.

Al­though he prob­a­bly did, he did­n’t need to say, “Wel­come!” in or­der for me to feel a sense of be­long­ing on this cam­pus. And, as I be­gin my fi­nal Bethel se­mes­ter, I was hon­ored to be able to in­ter­view some­one who gave me a pro­found sense of how much the pro­fes­sors care for their stu­dents at this uni­ver­sity.