Possible Nominee for an Honorary Doctorate:
Eileen M. Collins (Colonel, USAF, Ret.)
Commander Eileen Collins earned an A.S. from CorningCommunity College (1976), a B.A. from SyracuseUniversity (1978), an M.S. from StanfordUniversity (1986), and an M.A. from WebsterUniversity (1989).
She graduated from Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training in 1979 and taught as a T-38 instructor pilot until 1982. From 1983 to 1985, she was a C-141 commander and instructor pilot. In 1986, she studied at the Air Force Institute of Technology, and from 1986 to 1989, she worked as an assistant professor in mathematics (and as a T-41 instructor pilot) at the Air Force Academy in Boulder, Colorado. She graduated from the Air Force Test Pilot School in 1990 and was selected by NASA to become an astronaut.
Before serving as a space shuttle pilot and the first female commander of a space shuttle mission, Collins worked in Mission Control as a spacecraft communicator, and served Astronaut Office Spacecraft Systems Branch Chief, Chief Information Officer, Shuttle Branch Chief and Astronaut Safety Branch Chief. She piloted two space shuttle missions before commanding space flights in 1999 and 2005.
Eileen Collins is now retired from the U.S. Air Force, but continues working for NASA. (Information is distilled from Collin’s online NASA Biographical Data Sheet)
What follows is Dave Fisher’s take on Eileen Collins—how she got to be where she is and why her story is significant:
The story goes that Eileen Collins came from an economically disadvantaged area of Elmira, NY. She worked jobs as a teenager to buy a telescope, and had a deep interest in astronomy. She was able to enroll in the CorningCommunity College, and there her academic record was good enough that she was accepted into the Air Force Academy. Eileen went on to excel there, and was sent to the Air Force Test Pilot School. She came home one day, told her mother she was going to be leaving for Colorado, packed her things and stuffed her telescope in an old car, and for the first time in her life drove off far from home. She became one of the very first women to qualify as a test pilot—let's face it, the Air Force was behind the ball on enlisting the talents of women in high performance aircraft. She was picked by NASA as one of the first women who were considered candidates for shuttle pilot training. [By this point there were lots of women scientists flying on the shuttle, but never before had there been a woman in the front flying the vehicle (a commander's position) or assisting in flying the vehicle (a pilot's position to the right of the commander on the flight deck).] Eileen was the first woman candidate to fly as pilot. She did that twice, and then was given the command of STS-93. She launched on Columbia as the first female shuttle commander, and what was in the back of the vehicle as payload for this mission? Turns out it was the world's largest X-ray telescope ever to be sent to space. Eileen also was called upon to command the Return To Flight mission, the first one after the Columbia accident. Some have said that that mission saved the space program from heading toward oblivion. She is likely now to retire as there are few remaining shuttle flights before the advent of the replacement vehicle for exploration of the Moon and eventually Mars, the latter beginning about 12 years from now.