Astronaut lands on campus for lecture
February 25, 2015
By Warren Taylor
Multiple space walks and orbiting earth more than 150 times are just a few bullet points on the resume of an astronaut set to speak on campus Thursday at noon.
“He is a fascinating guy and has done a little bit of everything,” said Emily Dotson, the associate director of the College of Engineering’s Elbert C. Ray eStudio.
The man in question is Dr. Story Musgrave, who will speak in the Frank H. Harris Grand Ballroom in the Student Center as part of Engineers Week. University president Eli Capilouto will introduce Musgrave at the free event.
“Dr. Musgrave is going to speak about the importance of communication and how it helped his career,” Dotson said.
The annual lecture for UK E-Week is designed to bring in a great public speaker to highlight the balance needed to be successful in the engineering field.
A native of Boston, Mass., who “considers Lexington, Kentucky to be his hometown,” Musgrave joined the United States Marine Corp in 1953 and served as a technician and an aircraft crew chief in Korea, Japan and Hawaii, according to the NASA website.
Musgrave holds seven degrees, including a doctorate in medicine from Columbia University and a master of arts in literature from the University of Houston.
Before embarking on a career with NASA in 1967, Musgrave completed his surgical internship at the UK Medical Center in 1964-65 while also earning a masters degree of science in physiology and biophysics in 1966.
During his time at NASA, Musgrave served aboard all six space shuttles and performed numerous walks in space, most notably one in 1993 to repair the Hubble Space Telescope.
During the Hubble mission, Musgrave spent more than 10 days in space and orbited the earth 163 times, according to Musgrave’s website.
After leaving NASA in 1997, Musgrave has worked, according to Dotson, as a landscape architect and concept artist with Walt Disney.
Dotson believes the event is a fantastic opportunity for students, engineering and non-alike, to hear from a “living legend.”
“Students will hear from an incredible man who has so many stories about being in space,” Dotson said.
Georgetown, Ky., native and doctoral candidate in computer science Clinton Woodson said he cannot wait to learn from someone who has done so much in the field of science.
“It should help me decide what I want to do with my future,” Woodson said.
