ASK OCE — August 4, 2006 — Vol. 1 Issue 11

The Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership (APPEL) will roll out a thoroughly revised curriculum in October 2006 to address NASA’s needs as it pursues the Vision for Space Exploration.

The new curriculum integrates project management and engineering into a four-level development sequence that is intended to simulate a typical 30-year career span at NASA. The revision marks the culmination of a yearlong process for APPEL that began with the merger of the former Academy of Program/Project Leadership (APPL) and NASA Engineering Training (NET) in 2005.

A key feature of the new curriculum will be “Introduction to NASA,” a three-week course for all new hires at the Agency. While APPEL has offered a course by the same title for many years, the new version will consist of three week-long sessions to be taken over a period of several months, punctuated by on-the job learning and homework assignments. In addition to an overview of the Agency’s vision, mission, and history, it will include an introduction to aeronautics and astronautics as well as the disciplines of project management and systems engineering.

Angelo “Gus” Guastaferro, a retired NASA veteran, has joined APPEL as a consultant to lead its curriculum development team. Among his many jobs within the Agency, Guastaferro served as Deputy Project Manager for the Viking mission, NASA Director of Planetary Programs, and Deputy Director of Ames Research Center. After retiring from NASA, he served as Vice President of Civil Space for Lockheed Martin.

“No matter how institutionalized or how formal the program that you develop is, the time you have to expose someone to professional development activities is less than one percent of a person’s career,” Guastaferro said, “So this can’t be something that’s hit-and-run.”

APPEL Director Dr. Ed Hoffman said that Guastaferro would be “an invaluable resource” because of the breadth of his experience. “Gus has been a longtime supporter of the Academy. We’re very fortunate to have his expertise at this juncture as we strengthen our curriculum to meet the Agency’s project management and systems engineering needs for the Vision for Space Exploration.”