The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, July 1963 - April, 1964 Page: 367
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NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center
relied on them to give tomorrow's electorate a broader, basic
scientific education so that, in later years, the nation's rich her-
itage of popular government and democratic exploration of space
might indeed prevail. Accordingly, the space center from the
outset had a close working relationship with Houston's schools,
implementing their regular curricula with spacemobile lectures
and planned school exhibits. The center also inaugurated a
teacher-trainer program in which school teachers, once each week,
could receive at MSC laboratories on-the-job training in space
sciences and computer mathematics. This program in turn en-
couraged more enlightened instruction in the classrooms them-
selves, not only in the regular courses of biology, chemistry, and
physics, but also in special mathematics and exploratory science
courses offered to gifted pupils each summer."'
On the university level, the center's needs-and therefore its
influences-were far greater. It needed the universities to extend
the education of NASA's future scientists; to do creative research
in support of the nation's space objectives; and to instruct MSC
personnel on the latest advances in such fields as thermodynamics
and biochemistry, higher mathematics and astronomy. These
needs impelled MSC, during its first summer in Houston, to work
out a cooperating program with Rice University, the University
of Houston, the Baylor University College of Medicine, and Texas
A and M-a program that might one day make these institutions
the principal research and creative source for MSC's space projects.
The program itself, begun in the fall of 1962, took several
forms. One was a prompt exchange of brainpower, a give and take
of ideas, with MSC scientists lecturing in university classrooms
and university professors in MSC laboratories. Another was a
special graduate training course which Rice, the University of
Houston, and Texas A and M offered to some 125 MSC technical
personnel.42 Still another was the start of a long-range MSC plan
'1Eugene E. Horton to S.B.O., Houston, interview, July 22as, 1963; John W.
McFarland, Superintendent of the Houston Independent School District, to S.B.O.,
Houston, interview, August 2, 1963.
'"Paul E. Purser, Special Assistant to the Director, Manned Spacecraft Center,
to S.B.O., Houston, interview, July 22, 1963; Yeater, The NASA Manned Spacecraft
Center and Its Programs, 5-6; Houston Magazine (March, 1963), 28.
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Texas State Historical Association. The Southwestern Historical Quarterly, Volume 67, July 1963 - April, 1964, periodical, 1964; Austin, Texas. (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metapth101197/m1/429/?q=%221777%22&rotate=90: accessed July 16, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting Texas State Historical Association.