Shaping the Future of Environmental Studies at Grinnell

There’s a certain “full circle” aptness to Jennifer (Hooper) Honeycutt ’91 dedicating her career to ensuring the planet has clean water. After all, the title of her first-year Grinnell College tutorial taught by Luther Erickson was called Wherever There’s Water.

Honeycutt is the president and CEO of Veralto, a multinational public company dedicated to “Safeguarding the World’s Most Vital Resources.”™

“In a world that’s continually under duress and becoming increasingly fractured and polarized, we take pride in what we do,” Honeycutt says. “There’s no group of people that doesn’t need clean water, safe food, and trusted essential goods. We feel strongly about our purpose.”

The ties between Honeycutt, water, and Grinnell College run deep. That’s even more true now that she has made a $750,000 gift to jump-start an effort to create a new endowed chair in environmental studies.

“I thank Grinnell so much for shaping my approach to the world around me,” Honeycutt says. “It was important for me to find a way to give back and contribute toward a more sustainable future. Environmental studies made sense and is part and parcel with what we’re doing at Veralto to protect our natural resources.”

Establishing an endowed faculty chair in environmental studies will enhance Grinnell in ways that will resonate for generations to come, says Ruth Feingold, vice president of academic affairs and dean of the College.

“Endowed chairs allow us to lift up the faculty role, collectively, and to celebrate the many ways that the complex work of teaching, scholarship, and community service is manifested throughout our faculty,” she says. “It also allows us to recognize faculty members who contribute their expertise, passion, and manifest dedication to Grinnell’s mission. I’m delighted Jennifer is spurring on the creation of a new endowed chair and thank her for this valuable contribution to our environmental studies program.”

Grinnell College offers an environmental studies concentration where students explore the many issues posed by the relationship between humans and the natural environment. About 30 students are currently taking part.

“Jennifer’s gift comes at a pivotal time,” says Andrew Graham, professor of chemistry who teaches several environmental studies courses. “I take her gift as an expression of her gratitude for the experience she had as a student, her belief in the strength of the existing environmental studies program, as well as looking to the future and envisioning what environmental studies at Grinnell can be.”

Peter Jacobson, biology professor and chair of environmental studies, says the environmental studies concentration has been around for decades and has served students well. He is excited about the next chapter of the program, which will include incorporating more humanities elements and allow for greater use of the Conard Environmental Research Area (CERA).

“When we’re teaching courses that have an interdisciplinary bent, we articulate that while science is great, the reality is it only takes us a third of the way to the solution,” Jacobson says. “The ability to engage and have conversations across disciplines is critical for students’ professional development but also critical in facing the realities of these challenges. Within all these pieces that we are trying to integrate, Jennifer’s support is really meaningful to the momentum for getting it all done.”

In 2019, Honeycutt was among a sizable group of donors that established the Luther and Jenny Erickson Professorship. Luther Erickson was not only Jennifer’s advisor, but he also advised her dad, Philip Hooper ’69, when Hooper was a Grinnell student. And when Jennifer’s younger sister, Joanna Rogers ’96, attended Grinnell, Erickson also was her advisor. “Luther had a long history of supporting the academic journeys of my family.”

Honeycutt majored in French and chemistry. She started her career as an analytical research chemist, doing chemical method development for drinking water and wastewater analysis at Hach Company in Colorado.

“I thought I had died and gone to heaven because two weeks after graduating in 1991, I bought a car, got a dog, and rented a house,” she recalls. “Nine months in, I realized not only was life pretty lonely amongst the glassware, but I wasn’t a particularly gifted chemist. So, I started volunteering for project management leadership roles within R&D (research and development).”

Honeycutt joined Danaher Corp. in 2000 and began a process of learning about various divisions of the health care company. She focused on the water quality, sensors and controls, product identification, life sciences, and genomic medicines segments of the company, and what she could do to provide leadership to those areas. She spent eight years building Danaher’s life sciences and genomic medicines platform, and five as an executive vice president.

When Danaher decided to spin off its environmental and applied solutions business into what would become Veralto, Honeycutt was tapped as its leader, and the company was launched on the New York Stock Exchange in October 2023.

“We’re building momentum as a public company,” Honeycutt says. “The spin has been fun in terms of crafting the company culture and standing up Veralto’s identity. About 60 percent of the business is in water quality, where we provide water analytics and water treatment solutions. We sell to municipalities and industrial water users throughout the world. The other 40 percent is in product quality and innovation, where we focus on compliant packaging, food safety, and traceability for consumer packaged goods.”

Honeycutt returned to campus in October to speak with students in the Learning from Alumni class and meet with Jacobson and Graham. Making a gift toward an endowed faculty position reminded her of her incredible professors at Grinnell.

“In addition to Luther Erickson, David Campbell was influential. I took a couple of trips to the Amazon with him to study the importance of biodiversity,” she says. “Kesho Scott helped me understand the human condition of underrepresented populations, balance of power, and the ways in which society either works or doesn’t. Leslie Lyons (who holds the Luther and Jenny Erickson Professorship) and Lee Sharpe gave me my love of instrumental analysis and all things ‘cool’ in the lab. I’ve always said we need more liberal arts folks in business who bring the combination of critical thinking skills and intellectual curiosity to understand interrelated systems and make sense of the world around them. It’s easy to get out of bed in the morning when you are trying to save the planet, but it is complex work.”

Honeycutt is hopeful other Grinnellians will consider joining her effort to support the endowed chair position.

“We are facing a future that is going to be considerably constrained if we don’t find a way to solve some of these very significant challenges between humanity and industry in the face of climate change,” she says. “We can’t just save the planet; we also have to accommodate commerce and trade. We have to do both, and we have to create balance. What I would say to prospective donors is this is a fantastic opportunity to catalyze the next generation of environmental leaders.”