Start with his organic chemistry notebook.
Evan Shaw can leaf through the equations on every page, and what looks like hieroglyphics to the uninitiated is what Shaw knows to be the Clasien rearrangement in the language of chemistry.
For him, his old notebook from Dr. Meghan Blackledge’s organic chemistry class is like a memoir, a journal. The equations are his words, and the pages are his memories of coffee being his best friend and chemistry directing a path to his future.
Shaw, an HPU biology major from Chicago, wants to become an orthopedic surgeon or an anesthesiologist. Just something in medicine that can help people who hurt. It’ll keep him busy for years. But Shaw is used to being busy.
He’s a Presidential Scholar and a member of the Kappa Sigma fraternity, and he has worked as a University Ambassador since he was a sophomore. He has given more than 100 university tours, and he knows every corner of campus.
Now, after three years of joining clubs, taking leadership positions, and spending weeks in a chemistry lab, Shaw can really understand what writer C.S. Lewis meant.
Lewis once wrote: “Isn’t it funny how day by day nothing changes, but when you look back, everything is different.”
“I think of that quote, and I say to myself, ‘When did I become responsible?’” Shaw says. “I mean, here comes Evan, loving life and loving college. Who ever thought he would present at a science conference? I just see how much I’ve changed. And now, I’ve been selected as an extraordinary leader.”
Shaw has been named HPU’s Extraordinary Leader for the month of November.
How? His organic chemistry notebook holds some of the clues.
“That is Evan”
For eight weeks this summer, Shaw spent eight hours a day in a third-floor chemistry lab in Congdon Hall.
He and two other HPU students were working side by side with Dr. Blackledge, discovering the importance of specific amino acids on the mazEF Toxin-Antitoxin System found in E. coli bacteria.
But here’s what Shaw really discovered: He liked presenting this topic at a first for HPU – its summer research program for biology, physics and chemistry majors better known as SuRPS.
That’s the campus acronym for the Summer Undergraduate Research Program.
It all fit into who Shaw, a former communication major, had become: a science guy.
“Literature always leaves room for argument, and that always drove me crazy because there was no right answer,” he says. “But in science, there is always a right answer. It’s like what Carl Sagan said, ‘Somewhere something incredible is waiting to be known,’ and that is so true with science.
“There is so much potential for discovery.”
Last summer when he applied for SuRPS, Shaw became one of nearly 100 students who wanted to attend. He became one of 25 selected.
At first, he was cautious. He checked his math every time with Blackledge, and he’d ask a question and hear Blackledge respond, “OK, Evan, you tell me why.”
Slowly, Blackledge saw Shaw change. Today, he continues to change.
“He’s grown from being a doer of experiments to a designer of experiments,” she says. “He’s really thinking about it now, this higher order of thinking in which he’ll say, ‘OK, this is what needs to be done and this is what we do next.’
“He understands what logical path he needs to go to get there. That is Evan.”
Shaw describes Blackledge as his mentor.
She is 32, a married mother of two from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Last summer, Blackledge came to HPU with impeccable credentials: undergrad degrees in English and biochemistry from Wellesley College and a doctorate in chemistry from Duke.
She and her husband, Ryan, a lobbyist for a local hospital, often invite her students to their home for hamburgers and hotdogs to unwind away from campus. Shaw has been twice. His visits confirm what he already knew.
Blackledge has taught him how to be a scientist in the modern world.
“She inspired me because she has accomplished so much, and she’s so young,” he says. “She’s in her early 30s, and she was able to do all this, and it got me thinking, ‘Why should I settle for anything less?’”
The Next Step
Shaw is the resident assistant for the Kappa Sigma house on campus. He’s been a member of the Biology Club and the Health Organization Students of America. In May, he graduates.
He wants to start as a medical scribe in Boston, one of the country’s biggest medical hubs, and build his resume before going on to medical school. But he’ll keep his organic chemistry notebook. It’s a reminder of who he wants to be.
Science is only part of it.
“They say everyone dies twice,” he says. “You die physically. Then, your name dies, you’re forgotten. I never want to die twice. I want it to be ‘Evan Shaw was known for this.’”