PASADENA, CALIF.-- Sally Ride has experienced the highs and the lows of being first. The highs were being NASA's first female astronaut, and orbiting Earth in two flights aboard the space shuttle Challenger. The lows involve being the first person to serve on two NASA investigative boards, the first for the Challenger explosion, the second for the recent Columbia tragedy.
Ride will discuss her experiences in space, and her efforts to promote girls' interest in science, math, and technology as the featured speaker for the ongoing Congressional Science Scholar Forum. The free talk is presented by Congressman Adam B. Schiff in conjunction with the California Institute of Technology, and will take place on Saturday, March 29, at 10 a.m. on the Caltech campus.
Open to teachers and students from local high schools, Glendale Community College, and Pasadena City College who are focusing on science and math, the forum is intended to give students the chance to learn about opportunities in both areas from the personalized view of a scientist. Series topics span physics, biology, chemistry, and math.
Ride, a member of the Caltech Board of Trustees, became the first American woman to orbit Earth when she flew aboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1983. Her second flight was also aboard Challenger in 1984, and she was training for a third mission when the spaceship exploded shortly after liftoff in 1986.
Ride was a member of the team chosen to investigate the Challenger explosion, and this month was also appointed a member of the NASA investigative board for the recent explosion of the space shuttle Columbia. She is the only person to have been named to both panels.
In 1987 Ride left the astronaut corps and is currently a professor of physics at the University of California, San Diego. She has had a longtime concern about the lack of women in science, and is the founder, president, and CEO of Imaginary Lines, a company dedicated to creating events, programs, and activities that support girls' interest in science, math, and technology. One such event, the second annual Los Angeles Sally Ride Science Festival, will take place on the Caltech campus, also on March 29. It is one of a number of such festivals conducted around the country.
Her Congressional Science Forum talk will take place in Room 210, the auditorium on the second floor of Caltech's East Bridge building. Free parking is available in the Caltech parking lots adjacent to the tennis courts and south of California (between Wilson Avenue and Arden Road). From the parking lot, the East Bridge building is directly across California.
All students who live or attend school within the 29th Congressional District have a special invitation to attend the lecture series, which is free and open to the public. For more information, call Pearl Fu in Congressman Schiff's office at (626) 304-2727, or Elizabeth Krider in Caltech's Government and Community Relations Office at (626) 395-8179.