Matthew Hejduk, PhD ’06, a former airman and NASA project engineer who lives in Waco, earned degrees in engineering and divinity before coming to the University of Dallas. As he describes it, his study of God called him higher — not only ad astra, to the research he continues today at the Aerospace Corporation, but also to a more comprehensive examination of the truth.
“Originally, I was an ordination candidate in the Episcopal Church, so I actually have a seminary degree before the University of Dallas,” Hejduk says. “Getting a seminary degree became very frustrating because it was obvious that I was being taught things and had to learn them, but I couldn’t really understand them … their presuppositions often weren’t articulated.”
For Hejduk, a deeper examination of philosophy was “an essential next step if I really wanted to understand theology.”
In his view, distinctions between disciplines hinder the scientist and theologian alike. After all, as Hejduk reminds us, both fields of study were once unified in natural philosophy.
“I’ve always had a very broad natural curiosity,” Hejduk says. “I think the problem we encounter is that in secondary school, even in most undergraduate programs, students aren’t necessarily exposed to subjects like this. I got through high school without taking a philosophy course; I got through undergraduate school without taking a philosophy course. … I never took an archaeology class. I never took an architecture class. I never took art history. A lot of things I wish I had been given to me were not.”
The doctorate in philosophy awarded by the Braniff Graduate School of Liberal Arts turned out to be a perfect fit. The Institute of Philosophic Studies (IPS), Braniff’s doctoral program, requires all students to complete the IPS Core Curriculum, which melds the three concentrations of the IPS: literature, philosophy and politics. This common curriculum took up about a third of Hejduk’s coursework, juxtaposing his philosophy coursework alongside courses on Homer, Hobbes, Milton and the Bible.
While Hejduk’s decidedly untechnical degree sometimes draws skepticism from colleagues, he insists that every large project should have a philosopher.
“The ability to look at a complex problem, decompose it into its constituent elements, see the relations between those elements and their interactions, and bring new and unexpected methods of analysis and understanding to a problem that may be kind of ossified — that is the holistic approach,” Hejduk says. “We talk a lot about interdisciplinary studies now in the humanities. It’s been hot for 10, 20 years or so in the technical fields. But it’s what UDallas in its program always did.”
The holistic approach as Hejduk describes it can yield benefits for technical goals. Hejduk gives an example: Faced with an aerospace engineering question, Hejduk drew a solution from the mining industry.
“There’s a technique they use in the mining industry to try to figure out where mines are likely to contain ore. … I recognized that this was probably a very useful way to try to model how bright satellites are likely to be under solar illumination,” he says. “When I was trying to solve this particular problem in satellite photometric modeling, and I came across this technique in a different area, I was able to see that it probably would have applicability. It’s now actually an operationally implemented algorithm in the military.”
In his view, specialized training is unlikely to yield similar innovation.
“I’m not going to tell you it was my insight; that isn’t what’s important. It’s having learned to look elsewhere for inspiration, methodologically, to take account of how somebody else proceeds. That’s what I really polished to a high gloss at UDallas because of the way the curriculum works,” Hejduk says.
“I wanted something that was more in conversation with the tradition, and that’s what the University of Dallas offered.”
Support for the IPS helps the University of Dallas attract talented students and supply
the nation’s institutions with scholars appreciative of the Western tradition. If
you would like to establish a fellowship for the IPS, reach out to Assistant Director
of Development Koji de Ramos by email at ddramos@udallas.edu or by phone at 972-265-5849.
