November 6, 2026
By Madison Maxwell BA 18
Long before Jeremy Maurer knew what a career in science might look like, he knew he wanted to be a scientist.
After serving as missionaries in Haiti, his family moved to northern Indiana, and he became aware of Grace College, where Dr. Don DeYoung’s work at the intersection of faith and science piqued his interest.
Maurer enrolled at Grace as a general science major and flourished in an academic setting where he was exposed to a broad range of science courses and where his scientific interests and Christian faith could grow together.
After completing his degree in 2010, Maurer stayed one more year to earn a Master’s in Exegetical Studies from Grace Theological Seminary, devoting himself to the study of scriptural interpretation before nearly a decade of graduate school and scientific research.
Looking back on that year under the tutelage of Biblical scholars such as Dr. John Davis, Dr. Tiberius Rata, and Dr. Matt Harmon, “transformative” is the word Maurer uses, expressing that his time in seminary was marked by “personal interactions with people who were thinking deeply about matters of faith, Scripture, and the church.”
Maurer went on to earn a master’s degree in geological sciences from Indiana University and a Ph.D. in geophysics from Stanford University. He then spent a year and a half conducting postdoctoral research at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, where his office sat across the street from where Mars rovers are designed and tested.
In 2020, he joined Missouri University of Science and Technology as a faculty member, where he continues to serve today as an associate professor, researching the deformation of Earth’s crust and studying earthquakes, faults, and volcanoes.
At a state university, Maurer looks for natural opportunities to help students consider questions of faith, meaning, and purpose and especially enjoys mentoring graduate students, which he likens to a “discipleship model.”
As he guides students through next steps in their professional journeys, he is reminded of a truth he found to be true in his own life: while the path wasn’t always what he expected, he could rest in the fact that it was God’s plan all along.
Want to study science at a school where your faith will also thrive? Learn more about Grace’s largest academic school: The School of Science & Engineering.
