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Caltech News Release
For Immediate Release
March 11, 2003

Contact: Mark Wheeler
         (626) 395-8733
         wheel{at}caltech.edu

Astronaut Sally Ride to Speak on Piquing Interest in Science
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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.

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