Mount de Sales Dominican sister shares journey after pursuing science, finding faith 

When Dominican Sister Albertine Cevallos was young, serving God and advancing scientific knowledge would have seemed like two very different pursuits, even mutually exclusive. 

“I grew up in a very rationalistic household,” said Sister Albertine, now a science teacher at Mount de Sales Academy in Catonsville. 

Although she was baptized and generally brought up in the faith, including Catholic school through fifth grade, most dinner table conversations and outings revolved around science, she remembered. 

“We had a rich academic background,” Sister Albertine said, recalling how her chemical engineer father and medical doctor mother frequently took her and her brother to a science museum. 

Occasionally the West Virginia family would host more fervent Christians for dinner. Sister Albertine remembers the topic of miracles coming up, and she remembers both the politeness expressed at the table and the setting the record straight that occurred later on. 

“They would leave, and my parents would say, ‘That’s not real,’ ” Sister Albertine said. 

Her first exposure to science and faith as complementary rather than opposing concepts came during her college years, at Caltech of all places. 

“I worked very hard in high school,” Sister Albertine explained. “My dream plan was to go to a very selective college, study astrophysics and be a physics professor.” 

The California Institute of Technology – the prestigious Pasadena institution that counts famed physicist Richard Feynman among its past professors – clearly fulfilled the first step of that plan. 

“I really expected to be surrounded by like-minded scientists, where the best you can do is agnosticism,” Sister Albertine said. “I thought that would be in the water there.” 

She encountered something entirely different, and “it threw my whole worldview into a tailspin.” 

To her surprise, the biggest student group at Caltech was the Caltech Christian Fellowship, whose members she described as “so intelligent and also volunteering with the homeless, or making sure that you had treats on your birthday.” 

“These were real human touches and real acts of love,” Sister Albertine remembered. 

She never formally joined the Christian group, but she became friends with various participants. 

Over time, she has come to realize that science had pointed to faith all along. 

“There is a link between the wonder that’s needed to study science at a deep level and the contemplation you need to enter into deep prayer,” Sister Albertine said. “A question like, ‘Why is the sky blue?’ – It’s one step away from asking why God loves us so much.” 

Finding her way 

After graduating from Caltech with an astrophysics degree, Sister Albertine pursued a science communications degree from the University of California, Santa Cruz, because she loved the idea of “explaining science in a way people understand.” 

The move was consistent with her current role – helping young women understand science – but when she began an internship at a newspaper in Orlando, Fla., she sensed something missing. 

“I yearned for something greater,” she said. 

Meanwhile, Sister Albertine’s friends were praying for her. 

She went to a nondenominational service and, a little later, to a praise and worship event at an evangelical church. 

“There was a moment when I came to believe,” Sister Albertine said. “Before that moment, I would have been skeptical, but after that moment I was on fire.” 

It was 2010. 

Sister Albertine met more Christians. She got another internship, this time in Washington, D.C., and an editor of the publication she interned at was Catholic. 

“She would go to Mass at lunch, and I would go with her,” Sister Albertine remembered. 

As Sister Albertine learned about the Eucharist, she came to a rational realization. 

“If that’s Jesus, why wouldn’t you just stay with him all day in the church?” 

In her way, she did her best to do so. She moved back home, pursued freelance writing and worked up to Bible studies at night, Mass “as often as I could,” and frequent eucharistic adoration. 

Her prayer and contemplation formed a request: “Lord, help me understand if you’re really in the Blessed Sacrament.” 

Called 

“At adoration one afternoon I felt him calling to me to lay down my life for him,” Sister Albertine said. “I knew it was a call to be a sister. I was very humbled to receive it, because I spent so long not believing in him. … There was nothing I had done to deserve it; he’s just so merciful. He’s just different from everybody else.” 

She attended her first retreat with the Dominicans in 2011, spending time at their motherhouse in Nashville. 

“I didn’t want to leave,” Sister Albertine remembered. 

She entered the Dominican Sisters of St. Cecilia in 2013. The Nasville-based order is primarily a teaching community, founded in 1860. The sisters currently teach more than 15,000 students from preschool through college in the United States, Canada, Europe and Australia. 

Sister Albertine has been teaching at Mount de Sales, which has been administered by the Dominicans since the 1980s, for four years. She teaches physics, chemistry and AP computer science, and she helps with the robotics team and the Ultimate Frisbee club. 

“I love teaching,” she said, noting that she takes her role as a physics teacher as “a pure gift” from her community.  

Sister Albertine was featured on the June 8, 2025 episode of Catholic Review Radio. Click play below to listen to the full show:

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