A primary reason Elliott Kirwan, rising senior and president of the Society of Catholic Scientists (SCS) Chapter at Notre Dame, decided to attend Notre Dame was so that he could study science and practice his Catholic faith.

“My ultimate goal in life, my main motivation in studying science, is to seek truth,” he said.

He is not alone. For many students and faculty within the University of Notre Dame’s College of Science, faith isn’t left at the door after Mass. Many find it beneficial to have a supportive environment—whether it’s in a club like SCS or in a class—to talk about the intersection of science and religion.

Kirwan, who is majoring in physics, attributes his love for science to the mountains of Colorado, where he grew up, and to his dad, a biochemist at Amgen.

“I feel like my love for science, from the very beginning, was deeply tied to nature and beauty,” he said.

Past president Amanda Waelde, a rising second-year bioengineering graduate student and now operations director for SCS at Notre Dame, researches glucagon-delivering liposomes for Type 1 diabetes patients, in the laboratory of Matthew Webber.

She has struggled to see how her lab work fits into her spiritual identity, other than its humanitarian purpose of preventing people with Type 1 diabetes from recovering from life-threatening sugar crashes.

“I had been trying to figure out how I can connect this to my faith; it’s not like we’re in clinical trials here…I’m just trying to do my little synthesis,” she said. “What I'm trying to do is to imitate the natural function of the human body in a very inferior way… that really just shows how beautiful and intricate the system that a far greater designer than me has designed,” she said.

Jessica Brown, associate professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, previously taught the Fundamentals of Biochemistry course and never told her class specifically that she’s Catholic. But on the first day of class she would often share her previous struggles over whether “to be working overseas and be like Mother Teresa, or working as a scientist in a laboratory.” Students would thank her after class for her witness, which surprised her.

In 2022 she spoke at an annual meeting about faith and science, the 4th Annual Thomistic Philosophy and Natural Science Symposium, which was hosted by the Dominican’s Thomistic Institute. That experience motivated her to plan a course for Notre Dame students: “The Chemistry of Eternal Life.”

However, she realized that the scope was too narrow, so she worked with Notre Dame’s McGrath Institute for Church Life and developed the course she taught for the first time during the spring 2025 semester, called “Understanding Life through the Sacraments and Science.” The course has a 50/50 mix of Catholic theology and science.

In a biochemistry class, the goal is to master the terminology and the concepts, Brown said, but for her new class—which examined the science related to each of the sacraments—the goal is impact and exploration so that it is both transformational and informational.

“It’s amazing how many topics there are in science that have a really nice connection to theology,” she said, adding that since she is not an expert in theology, she appreciated the guest speakers from across campus who spoke with her class. She hopes to potentially invite more next year.

David Medvigy, associate professor in the Department of Biological Sciences, teaches a course that combines the science of climate with teachings about the environment by the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches. He developed a 1-credit course during the 2020 Covid pandemic, when professors were challenged with creating winter session courses that could be taught online. In 2022 he expanded it to a 3-credit course in which any student at Notre Dame can enroll.

About 80 percent of the course focuses on climate change biology, with 20 percent on theological considerations from readings of Laudato Si’, an encyclical by Pope Francis, as well as readings from Thomas Aquinas, Eastern Orthodox religious leaders, and Popes John Paul II and Benedict.

“Once I expanded the course, we got to go into a lot more detail about observed climate change and what various Christian thinkers would have said about climate change,” he said. He complements study of the science of climate change during the past 25-30 years with consideration of how people should respond.

“The whole point of the class is for them to come up with an argument based on what extent they think we should care about the possibility of climate change based on what has been observed through the different readings that they did,” Medvigy said.

Kirwan and Waelde helped the Notre Dame SCS spearhead Faith and Science Week with the support of the College of Science and the McGrath Institute for Church Life. They, along with Brown, Medvigy, and others, have helped plan the Gold Mass and Lecture at Notre Dame each fall. Held on campus since 2017, the Gold Mass is dedicated to St. Albert the Great, the patron saint of scientists and engineers, and is named for the gold color of the hoods of those who hold doctorates in the sciences.

While Brown and Medvigy consider updates to their courses, Waelde plans to continue the growth of SCS on campus by encouraging more graduate students to join. Kirwan echoed a desire for connection and continuity as well. As he prepared for his senior year, he focused on developing younger leadership.

“This year is going to be critical for getting the group passed on to younger students to make sure that it continues after I'm gone,” Kirwan said.

Both students spoke to the importance of building a faith-based support network in academia.

“If you want to live a life as a scientist or an engineer, and you want to live a life as a Catholic … I think it’s really important to have support and have other people in your field who you can talk to, who share your faith,” Waelde said.

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Deanna Csomo Ferrell is Sr. Assistant Director of Marketing Communications in the College of Science, and editor of Catalyst.