Barbara Morgan Papers, 1980-2015

Barbara Morgan is a former NASA astronaut and educator at Boise State University. She completed a mission to the International Space Station aboard the shuttle Endeavor. Prior to her appointment as an astronaut, Morgan taught elementary school for 24 years in Montana and McCall, Idaho, taking a year off to teach English and science to third graders in Quito, Ecuador. Morgan was selected as the backup candidate for the NASA Teacher in Space Program in 1985. While continuing her career as a teacher, she worked with NASA on educational outreach and in 1998 was named a NASA mission specialist. During her years at Boise State, she provided vision and leadership to K-12 STEM teachers throughout Idaho and acted as a mentor to science and engineering students across the university. She helped prepare eight Boise State undergraduate teams for NASA's Microgravity University, supported the Idaho Science and Aerospace Scholars program for high school students and mentored participants in NASA's Pre-Service Teacher Institutes for teaching Idaho's two elementary schools that bear her name - the Barbara R. Morgan Elementary School in McCall and the Barbara Morgan STEM Academy in Meridian.