Col. Eileen Collins, the first woman to pilot and command an American spacecraft, will speak on “Leadership Lessons from Apollo to Discovery” in East Tennessee State University’s Dr. Roy S. Nicks Distinguished Lecture Series.
Her free public lecture will be held Wednesday, April 4, at 7 p.m. in the D.P. Culp University Center’s Martha Street Culp Auditorium.
Recognized as one of America’s most admired women, Collins is a veteran of four space flights with over 872 hours logged in space.
Most recently, she commanded STS-114 Discovery in July 2005, which was NASA’s “Return to Flight” mission following the February 2003 loss of the Shuttle Columbia.
She became the first woman to command a shuttle mission in July 1999 on STS-93 Columbia, which was highlighted by the deployment of the Chandra X-Ray Observatory, a telescope that has enabled scientists to study such exotic phenomena as exploding stars, quasars and black holes.
STS-63 Discovery in February 1995 saw Collins become the first woman to pilot a shuttle and was also the initial flight of the joint Russian-American Space Program that included a rendezvous with the Russian Space Station Mir. She also flew on STS-84 Atlantis in May 1997.
Growing up in Elmira, N.Y., Collins dreamed of becoming a pilot.
After earning an associate’s degree in mathematics and science at Corning Community College (NY), she received a scholarship to Syracuse University, where she earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics and economics.
In 1978, Collins entered the U.S. Air Force Undergraduate Pilot Training Program, the same year that NASA opened the shuttle program to women and selected its first class of female astronauts. It was then that she discovered another dream for herself – to become an astronaut.
During her Air Force service, Collins earned master’s degrees in operations research from Stanford University and space systems management from Webster University. She achieved her dream when NASA selected her for the astronaut program in 1990 while she was attending the Air Force Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base, Calif. She became an astronaut in 1991.
Collins retired from the Air Force in January 2005, and following her last space mission in July of that year, she retired from NASA in January 2006.
The Nicks Distinguished Lecture Series is named in honor of Dr. Roy S. Nicks, former ETSU president and chancellor emeritus of the Tennessee Board of Regents.
The Nicks Endowment Fund and its lecture series were established to “encourage the fellowship of people and exchange of ideas on issues relevant to the improvement of the educational system,” while also providing for high-quality professional development and intellectual stimulation.
The annual lecture is sponsored by the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis in ETSU’s Claudius G. Clemmer College of Education. Collins’ appearance is co-sponsored by the Department of Curriculum and Instruction in the Clemmer College of Education and the Educational Leadership Association, Women’s Resource Center and Women’s Studies Program at ETSU.
For more information or for special assistance for those with disabilities, contact the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis at 439-4430.

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