Astronaut Ellen Ochoa to talk about her career Feb. 14

Astronaut Ellen Ochoa will speak about her career at NASA at 4:30 p.m. Tuesday, Feb. 14, in Cubberley Auditorium. Her talk, which is free and open to the public, is part of the Call to Serve campaign, a national outreach initiative to encourage students to consider government careers and inspire a new generation to public service.

Ochoa, who received her master's and doctoral degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford in 1981 and 1985, respectively, is deputy director of flight crew operations at Johnson Space Center. She will discuss her career since joining NASA 17 years ago, serving 15 years in the astronaut program and logging more than 978 hours in space. Her presentation will focus on her fourth space shuttle mission, STS-110, part of the 2002 assembly of the International Space Station.

The Call to Serve campaign organizes special events and workshops to make more information about government jobs available to faculty, career services staff and students. At Stanford, the project is being coordinated by the Haas Center for Public Service in collaboration with the President's Office, career services, schools, and student and alumni organizations across campus.

Stanford is among six universities chosen to participate as pilot schools in the Call to Serve recruitment initiative. The program was designed by the Partnership for Public Service, a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization focused on revitalizing federal government and inspiring Americans to government service. The other participating schools are Clark Atlanta University, George Washington University, Louisiana State University, Ohio State University and University of New Mexico. The recruitment initiative is part of the overall Call to Serve network created in 2002 by the Partnership for Public Service and the U.S. Office of Personnel Management. The network currently consists of 565 colleges and universities, and 62 federal agency partners.

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