Story By Kathy Andrews
\nIllustrations by Peter Oumanski<\/p>\n
\u201cCuriosity, a willingness to play, and the desire to make things.\u201d These are traits Jane Bearinger \u201990 says drive her to create, whether in a science lab or an art studio\u2014both of which, as it happens, are settings where she feels very much at home.<\/p>\n
Bearinger is among Trinity community members we spoke with about the role of creativity in their lives and some of the ways Trinity helped to shape their paths.<\/p>\n
At Tr![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.trincoll.edu\/reporter\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/143\/2026\/06\/Trinity_fin_fl-1-e1780336158443-293x300.jpg\")
inity, Bearinger focused on the sciences but relished a variety of subjects, including architectural studies, philosophy, and international studies. She regularly stopped by Austin Arts Center to view artwork or performances. Studying abroad at King\u2019s College in London\u2014primarily chemistry\u2014was \u201ca phenomenal experience,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will always cherish the fact that Trinity gave me that opportunity to try a little bit of this and a little bit of that,\u201d she notes. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t so scripted. It led you to try things, to discover what you like.\u201d<\/p>\n
After graduating with a B.S. in biochemistry, Bearinger landed a job at Merck as a chemist, earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering from Northwestern University, did postdoctoral research in Switzerland, and ran the Medical Technologies Program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California. She steadily built expertise in minimally invasive medical innovations, eventually founding a diagnostics start-up and building a portfolio of technologies for the U.S. government to detect presymptomatic illness. She holds numerous patents for health care inventions involving diagnostics, nanotechnology, and coatings for implants and devices.<\/p>\n
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A few years ago, as her family\u2019s changing needs called for more of her attention, Bearinger stepped away from her med-tech career. She also began spending more time making art. Based in Greater Philadelphia, she specializes in chemical reactions on copper that create abstract depictions of nature. Her artwork often features bold and vibrant colors. In her role as artist, she admits that she sometimes feels \u201ca bit of imposter syndrome\u201d but is not letting that stop her. \u201cI have a hard time living with \u2018coulda, shoulda, woulda.\u2019 I\u2019d rather fall on my face and get back up than not try.<\/p>\n
\u201cI used to apply that attitude to biomedical design,\u201d says Bearinger. \u201cNow I apply it to oxidation reactions on copper. I mimic reactions that take years to naturally create blues or greens on rocks by the sea or in a mine. Using similar chemistries and creating optimized conditions, I catalyze those colors in days or weeks rather than years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ever since high school, Steve Syz \u201917 has been riveted by epic music, so orchestral and dramatic. \u201cIt riles me up,\u201d he says. \u201cIt feels like you\u2019re heading into war.\u201d He would wonder why certain film trailers motivated him so much to see those movies, including Marvel Studios\u2019 Avengers: Infinity War<\/em>. \u201cI realized it was the music and thought, \u2018I want to do something like that.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n Eight years into a career composing trailer music, Syz, who resides in Jersey City, New Jersey, says, \u201cThe driving thing is passion. If you don\u2019t have passion for something, it\u2019s hard to continue doing it for years.\u201d<\/p>\n The two sides to the trailer music business, says Syz, are custom work and themed albums. \u201cWith custom, you get a brief, maybe just a paragraph, describing the story, characters, and themes for a specific movie.\u201d Typically, a brief is emailed in the early evening. \u201cI\u2019ll make a cup of green tea and work through the night, till 3:00 or 4:00 a.m.,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n For themed album work, as many as 10 composers come up with music to fit a theme, such as sci-fi or horror. \u201cA horror track could be themed around a door knock or a loose spring, so it\u2019s fun,\u201d says Syz. Studios then pick and choose tracks for TV spots.<\/p>\n One of his favorite projects was Raya and the Last Dragon<\/em>, a 2021 animated fantasy action film by Walt Disney Animation Studios, for which four tracks of his music were used. \u201cIt\u2019s set in Southeast Asia, so I included sounds from that part of the world, like gamelans [gongs and other metal instruments], wood blocks and sticks, and an ocarina, too.<\/p>\n \u201cOnly about one in 10 projects will land\u2014the other nine just die. And it can take as much as a year to hear back,\u201d he says. \u201cYou just hope for that one placement that lands!\u201d<\/p>\n As a finalist for the 2025 National Book Award for Fiction for North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship<\/em> Esther, Associate Professor of English Ethan Rutherford was on a New York City stage last fall, reading from his novel to a huge crowd. Knowing Jim Shepard \u201978 was in the audience made the moment even sweeter, for it was in Shepard\u2019s Williams College creative writing class where Rutherford first realized writing fiction was what he really wanted to do. \u201cMeeting him, taking his class, and reading his work\u2014I\u2019ve come to see it as the great good luck of my life,\u201d Rutherford says. \u201cHe\u2019s been an incredible mentor and friend,\u201d he adds, noting the two have stayed in regular contact since Rutherford\u2019s 2002 Williams graduation.<\/p>\n Rutherford, a Trinity faculty member since 2014, says, \u201cWith any teaching of art, not just creative writing, it\u2019s about reminding students it\u2019s a lifelong process. It\u2019s an iterative process. Even if you abandon a story, that story taught you something and can end up informing the next attempt,\u201d he says. \u201cBeing an artist is about honing that mechanism, learning how to pay attention to the world and trying to figure out what your place is in it.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cWriting can be arduous but should also always be fun,\u201d Rutherford says. \u201cYou need to have fun while you\u2019re making things\u2014that seems to be the secret ingredient.\u201d<\/p>\n While writing North Sun<\/em>, he borrowed a technique from the music of Prokofiev\u2019s Peter and the Wolf<\/em>. He listened to the album often as a child and says he remains haunted by the French horns representing the wolf. At a point when he felt stuck with his novel, Rutherford tried matching each North Sun character with a specific instrument. The exercise \u201copened up\u201d the characters and helped him get back to writing the story. \u201cIt was a wonderful moment when I realized that just as other books are going to inform this novel, music can inform it, too.<\/p>\n \u201cA liberal arts education requires that you stay open to information and consider different ways of solving problems,\u201d he says. \u201cI think that\u2019s fantastic for someone who is interested in being creative.\u201d<\/p>\n Ted Moise \u201987 (pronounced \u201cmo-EES\u201d) recalls, \u201cMy first two years at Trinity, I was studying physics because I wanted to really understand how things worked. I declared a physics major and then realized I wanted not just to understand things but also to try to make something with what I was learning\u2014that\u2019s where engineering came in.\u201d<\/p>\n Moise, who also holds a Ph.D. from Yale University, was honored as a National Academy of Inventors 2024 fellow for pioneering work at Texas Instruments (TI) developing a memory technology, ferroelectric random-access memory (FRAM), that allows electronic devices to store data 100 times faster while using less power than other approaches. In biomedical applications such as pacemakers and glucose monitors, FRAM has helped achieve improved outcomes for millions of patients.<\/p>\n In 2021, after 29 years at TI, Moise joined the University of Texas at Dallas as a research scientist and director of UT Dallas\u2019s North Texas Semiconductor Institute. One lesson Moise has learned: \u201cSometimes the problem as presented is not really the problem to be solved.\u201d<\/p>\n When working with customers, he says, \u201cThe first step is to really listen and to listen with as few filters as possible. At TI, our job was to create technologies that would help solve customers\u2019 problems, both near term and longer term. We had to understand where the market was going and then figure out a way to develop a technology that would intersect with the path of the market and be useful for customers and hopefully also provide a differentiation, not only for TI but for TI\u2019s customers.\u201d<\/p>\n Asked about his approach to solving problems with a creative mindset, Moise, a Trinity Board of Fellows member, says, \u201cI like to get into work super early, completely by myself. I\u2019ll listen to music on my headphones and just start looking at the data to understand the root causes of the issues that we need to solve.\u201d<\/p>\n Adds Moise, \u201cI think of creativity as a kind of imagination, applied to benefit humanity.\u201d<\/p>\n Read on for more thoughts on creativity, the liberal arts, and Trinity community members who were impactful for these four creative individuals and hear more related to their work.<\/p>\n \u201cThe creative process is so different for everyone. To me, it\u2019s an all-encompassing thing. To somebody else, it may be a very specific mode they get into in order to produce a piece of music or write a poem. With my mutt of a background, whether I was working on chemical strategies for medical devices or now, if I\u2019m trying to create a specific patina shade, it\u2019s the creative process that helps me figure out how to attack that.\u201d<\/p>\n About William H. Church, associate professor of chemistry and neuroscience, emeritus<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cHe would ask students to go explore something, then come back and teach the rest of the class\u2014an invaluable way of learning.\u201d<\/p>\n On James K. Heeren, professor of chemistry, emeritus (who died in 2023)<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cDoc Heeren said, \u2018It\u2019s not what you do in the classroom. It\u2019s what you do in the lab.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n Check out Bearinger\u2019s artwork on Instagram @jpb_studios<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cMy freshman year, I had a keyboard in my single room in Jones. I thought, \u2018I\u2019m going to start this thing and see how it goes.\u2019 And in that one room, everything started.\u201d<\/p>\n On Dan Rom\u00e1n, associate professor of music<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cHe taught me the technical side of music production, including digital production, putting music into the computer.\u201d<\/p>\n About John Platoff, professor of music, emeritus, and Gail Woldu, Charles A. Dana Professor of Music<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cOn the theory side, they were the ones who helped me make music feel more colorful.\u201d<\/p>\n To listen to music by Syz, visit his website<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cThe daily interactions that occur with students who have widely varying backgrounds, viewpoints, and interests within a liberal arts environment force aspiring engineers to assess the motivations for creating technologies and the different ways in which they can be used to benefit society.\u201d<\/p>\n On Eric Fossum \u201979, H\u201914, inventor of the CMOS image sensor \u201ccamera on a chip\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n Note: While a Trinity student, Moise first heard from his professors about Fossum\u2014at the time a young professor at Columbia University\u2014because Moise was thought to be the first student at Trinity since Fossum to double major in engineering and physics. When looking into graduate programs, Moise visited Fossum at Columbia and considered joining his lab there. While Moise didn\u2019t end up in New York City, he entered the same Ph.D. engineering program at Yale University from which Fossum graduated, so the two share a bond as alumni of the same programs at both Trinity and Yale.<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cEric is an innovator who has long been an inspiration. I feel fortunate that over the years I\u2019ve had a chance to get to know him through both of us serving on various Trinity committees.\u201d<\/p>\n Read an article from UT Dallas\u2019s engineering magazine<\/a> about Moise and others at the North Texas Semiconductor Institute accelerating involvement in semiconductor research and workforce development in the North Texas region.<\/p>\n View a Texas Instruments video<\/a> about Moise\u2019s innovative work in developing FRAM technology.<\/p>\n \u201cI teach creative writing, but at this point I think of it more as just teaching creativity in the classroom, using text as a way to explore creativity.\u201d<\/p>\n On co-teaching in the InterArts Program with Lynn Sullivan, assistant professor of fine arts<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cIn talking to Lynn, in particular about how she teaches sculpture, that helped me really think about the way that I teach. I think I was set on teaching creative writing in a certain way, all text based. But hearing from Lynn how she approaches teaching sculpture and art and making things in a multidimensional and iterative process, and how she finds her inspiration, was wonderful. It was being involved in the InterArts community that led me to change the way that I approach teaching creative writing in the classroom. It\u2019s much more open-ended in questioning, which is a much happier classroom.\u201d<\/p>\n View video of Rutherford reading an excerpt from his novel, North Sun: Or, the Voyage of the Whaleship Esther, at the November 2025 National Book Awards Finalist Reading<\/a>.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.trincoll.edu\/reporter\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/143\/2026\/06\/Trinity_fin_fl-2-e1780336224916-300x284.jpg\")
A music major, Syz studied music production and theory. Performing at Trinity\u2019s annual Samba Fest\u2014he played the shaker\u2014was a highlight, as was the time he collaborated with a few students to record original music at The Mill. Syz composed the music and wrote the lyrics, a second\u00a0student sang, and a third ran the recording booth. \u201cThe music wasn\u2019t that good, but it was good experience, learning from scratch,\u201d he says.<\/p>\nGreen tea all-nighters<\/h2>\n
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A lifelong process<\/h2>\n
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<\/p>\nThe secret ingredient<\/h2>\n
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A professor steps in<\/h2>\n
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Moise set about pursuing engineering as a second major but had missed a few core classes offered only in a certain sequence. It seemed impossible to catch up and stick to his graduation timeline, until David J. Ahlgren \u201964, Karl W. Hallden Professor of Engineering, Emeritus, volunteered to mentor him in an independent study arrangement. \u201cHe made a huge difference,\u201d Moise says. \u201cI don\u2019t think that would have happened at another school.\u201d<\/p>\nImagination to benefit humanity<\/h2>\n
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\nMore food for thought<\/h2>\n
Jane Bearinger \u201990<\/h3>\n
Steve Syz \u201917<\/h3>\n
Ted Moise \u201987<\/h3>\n
Ethan Rutherford<\/h3>\n