April 3, 2008 Vol. 1. Issue 3
If you’ve been at NASA five years or less, Foundations of Aerospace at NASA is for you.
With its ten field centers, four Mission Directorates, and roughly 18,000 civil servants, NASA is a complex organization with a unique mission, culture, history, and way of doing business. On the surface, it is not readily apparent how all its pieces fit together. Who are NASA’s stakeholders? How does it fit into federal government? How did the agency become what it is today? How does it operate as a business? How is a space program conceived, planned, and executed? How is NASA involved internationally?
Foundations of Aerospace at NASA, the first building block of the Academy’s core curriculum, is designed to provide employees who began work at NASA within the last five years with an understanding of the big picture: the strategic direction of the agency, its governance structures, technical guidelines, organizational structure, and NASA’s past, present and future.
It includes sessions on communication and team participation skills, a refresher on the fundamentals of aeronautics and astronautics, and an introduction to project management and systems engineering as they are practiced at NASA.
Foundations also features high-level speakers from across the agency. NASA Administrator Dr. Michael Griffin has served as a guest lecturer in the past, as have other senior NASA leaders.
The next session of Foundations will take place April 14-25, 2008, at Johnson Space Center.
Sign up for Foundations of Aerospace at NASA through the SATERN system.
