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Astronauts

Leland Melvin Retiring From NASA

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 11, 2014
Filed under ,

Astronaut Leland Melvin to Leave NASA
“I am sorry to inform the NASA family that my good friend and our Associate Administrator for Education, Leland Melvin, has decided to retire next month after more than 24 years of NASA service. Since assuming the role of AA in 2010, Leland has streamlined NASA’s education organization and portfolio to deliver science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) content more effectively to educators and students. Using NASA’s unique missions, programs and other agency assets, he has helped cultivate the next generation of explorers – one that is truly inclusive and properly reflects the diverse make up and talent of this nation’s youth and our agency’s future. – Charlie B”

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

16 responses to “Leland Melvin Retiring From NASA”

  1. spacegaucho says:
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    I am surprised that there has been no mention that the directorate head of Research at Glenn quit with about a weeks notice and no statement of where she was going to or any farewell gatherings. This comes right before an all hands to discuss the reorganization after having been (finally) approved by HQ.
    Good luck to Mr. Leland.

  2. Rocky J says:
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    NASA is 0.5% of the Federal budget. The NASA Education cut is 0.8% (2012) of the NASA Budget – $136M. I think astronaut Melvin has done an admirable job with an underfunded program. Good luck to him.

    • Littrow says:
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      I see a lot less being done in NASA education now than 5 years ago and I think NASA education is largely ineffective[ its not necessarily less effective than when Melvin moved in but certainly not more effective. I am disappointed that for all the talk by Obama and Bolden and Melvin,they did not leverage the money of the Department of Education which is considerable and looking for purpose, to do something for space and STEM.They missed a great opportunity.

      • dogstar29 says:
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        NASA educational efforts for student groups have tended to be rather high in cost and limited in participation. I think coop or internship programs for graduate and undergraduates interested in actually working in the space program are reasonable and the robotics competition has been productive but in general I’m not sure education is a primary mission of NASA.

      • Rocky J says:
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        NASA is leveraging the web to disseminate STEM content to educators. It is more passive now than earlier because of cuts or erosion from flat budgets and inflation. You see the development of NASA virtual institutes and also, using the web – virtual STEM. But now, there is also the re-organization of Educational outreach that Obama is undertaking. About $47M is being diverted from NASA “small” education programs to other government agencies. That’s a 33% cut in the Education Office budget.

        I do not know if this will be a net sum gain for NASA educational outreach. If you hand over dissemination of NASA content to other agencies, there is the risk of favoritism, competition for limited resources elsewhere.

        I doubt if Leland Melvin is really retiring in the traditional sense. He will move into the private sector. Unfortunate for us, he will be unlikely to speak his mind on the changes being made but I hope not. I can imagine that someone that has tried streamlining the program and then has 1/3rd the budget ripped away would be disappointed. That’s my thought, I’d like to hear his “non-astronaut speak” real thoughts.

        My contact with Education office has been through giving talks at schools and participation in a mentoring program. What I saw was that the STEM offices were very quiet, under-staffed, printed materials were lacking – a bit old and few. I would agree with Vulture4 that the internship programs are effective. NASA tries to make schools aware of content available online but there remains room for improvement, IMO.

        One thing I would suggest to the Education office is that each NASA center should have a complete system for creating printed materials on demand – small, large format, the right paper and shipping to educators upon their request. Also, permit NASA volunteers and mentors to come in print from a trove of education content. Go the whole 9 yards then you can cut back on storing content that quickly grows old on the shelf. I think they do this but only half-way now.

        This is how I would state the purpose of NASA’s education program. To distill the exploration, surveying and discovery to a form that enriches the learning experience in the American school system and promotes the attraction of the brightest students into studies in math and science at the college level.

        Secondly, NASA’s program should educate the public at-large of NASA’s accomplishments through the investments by US taxpayer dollars. NASA does not function as a social service or function to maintain the country’s infrastructure; indirectly – yes, for example, technologies that reduce cost, improve healthcare or public safety. So while NASA can claim spinoffs and development and promotion of cutting edge technology to the private sector, it also serves every citizen through education and inspiration. The Education office is important. Its funding level in 2014 appears to be dropping to less than 1/2 of 1% of the NASA budget.

        • Littrow says:
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          “NASA is leveraging the web to disseminate STEM content “

          I would not call it leveraging. Leveraging implies you are using someone else’s resources for your own purposes, The internet is a tool that NASA decided long ago can replace hard copy print materials. But as you indicate, print materials are missing and needed.

          The internet has not been that widely accessible especially in schools. So moving all content to the internet, which NASA did a long time ago was the same as turning off the flow of information. So if you thought 1/2 of 1% of the NASA budget was being used, probably a lot of that went into a resource that schools do not have access to.

          Plus as you’ve pointed out, a lot of expensive NASA programs reach a small exclusive audience. More in-effectivity.

          Maybe its time used some brains to effectively use their limited resources rather than poor decisions made by people who really would not know what is or is not effective.

          From Bolden’s description Melvin had none of that requisite knowledge. Maybe he had some adequately trained advisors? But the directions he tried to go were not very successful so my guess is that his advisors were not very well prepared for their job either.

          • Rocky J says:
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            Good points. But I do not know about personnel qualifications in the program but they, along with the whole educational system, is still trying to figure out how best to use the new information age.

  3. Littrow says:
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    “streamlined NASA’s education organization and portfolio”

    I think that means the budget got cut way back. Of course there were also efforts by NASA to divest itself of education and turn the responsibility for space education over to other agencies. That went no where as it made no sense, but I wonder how many people’s lives were turned upside down by NASA management’s efforts to get rid of the function ?

    • J C says:
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      Those were not NASA’s efforts; they were an Administration initiative. Specifically the pet project of a long-time OMB staffer who had no background in education, but apparently managed to convince the White House it was a good idea. It has met with considerable opposition in Congress. NASA and other agencies have been dealing with this initiative in various ways. Earlier this year NASA simply published a list of educational programs it would keep and those that may be cut or transferred; in other words they said, “We intend to comply to the degree we want to.” The recent Defense Authorization Act instructed the Secretary of Defense to review a number of DoD education programs and report back to Congress as to whether they should be kept as is, transferred to Dept of Ed, or canceled. For any programs transferred to Dept of Ed, they will be required to provide to Congress a plan for funding and maintaining them; in other words, no handing things over to someone else so they can wield the ax.

      • Littrow says:
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        Interesting-I was unaware of this. I had heard that Leland Melvin chaired the panel that voiced the recommendation to move NASA education programs to the Dept of Ed and the Smithsonian.

  4. KGB5 says:
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    NASA should learn how to keep more of the employees like Leland. Leland will be greatly missed at NASA. He was a dynamic leader to all of the youth he spoke with. I had the privilege of hearing him speak on many occasions to all ages. He was a well rounded person which helped him relate with youth of our Nation on many levels. NASA will be losing a man with a heart for NASA. NASA should aim to have more spokesmen like him. GODSPEED LELAND!

    • Littrow says:
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      I think NASA has no shortage of well educated, knowledgeable, well rounded speakers; probably thousands of them. My experience in hearing many of them speak is that many of them have no trouble relating to the public and to students. They could use some guidance in the message to deliver and as some others on this thread noted, some more written materials and other technical materials that would reach more of the students to help them understand. As vulture4 notes, NASA educational programs spend a lot of money but reach only a relative handful of students.From your description of Melvin’s work over the last several years, he spent a small fortune speaking to a relative handful of students. As RockyJ mentions NASA still has yet to figure out how to effectively use the new digital tools, like the internet, for education.

      Melvin speaking to hundreds or even thousands of students was great for those hundreds or thousands he spoke to-actually he probably only reached a fraction of them and only a fraction of those will remember what he said. No doubt it made Melvin and the people who accompanied him, like yourself, feel good. But how effective is it if he only reached 1/2 of 1% of the US student population?

      Just think if Melvin had led NASA’s education program in the establishment of educational programs in which thousands of NASA engineers and scientists reached out to the nation’s 100 million students and could provide meaningful content either on the internet or with written materials!

      I attended a session recently at Rice University in which several top experts in space management, space history and space politics said that if NASA wants something to change in terms of popular support, then they need to do something different than what they have been doing, and in particular they need to be doing a better job educating the public and particularly future taxpayers.

      Maybe getting an adequate NASA budget would not be such a hurdle if an educated American population understood the value and the direction of the space program.

      Melvin’s job was to lead NASA in developing those educational programs; that is what he was supposed to be leading. A relative handful of young students did not need him as a leader. They have school teachers and school administrators 175 days a year for that.

      Unfortunately, your attitude is all too common amongst a lot of the NASA management hierarchy. This mis-direction is exactly why NASA is failing, in this case in its job in education.

      • Steve Pemberton says:
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        I think you missed the point of KGB5’s comment. You place a high value on “well educated, knowledgeable, well rounded speakers” which is correct but you conspicuously failed to mentioned the elusive gift of being able to connect to young people, which is one of the most important catalysts in actually impacting young people’s lives. And in case it’s not obvious, young people are much more likely to listen to an astronaut than just about anyone else except maybe media or sports personalities. But not all astronauts have an ability to connect with young people, and not all astronauts are willing to devote themselves to that task full time.

        All of the goals and potentials for NASA’s education department that you mentioned are laudable but you make it sound pretty easy. If you want to say that someone with more highly-charged organizational skills could have reached all of those goals single handedly, fine. But that was not the point of KGB5’s message, which is that NASA can use a lot more people like Leland Melvin in its education program.

        • Littrow says:
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          No, I did not miss his point. As I said:

          “My experience in hearing many of them speak is that many of them have no trouble relating to the public and to students.”

          And while it is laudable that Leland Melvin was a great speaker, connected well with kids and even that he was willing to speak (some astronauts avoid this); my point was that the position of AA is a lot more significant than the run of the mill astronaut of which there are dozens at any given time-some are now even trained and experienced educators.

          As an AA he has a lot of authority and a lot of responsibility, most notably moving those other 18000 NASA employees and even the 70000 contractors employees to support his goals.