PMFORUM Breaking News

The NASA Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership (APPEL) has published its April 2008 edition of "ask the academy", the monthly eNewsletter for program and project managers. The eNewsletter is distributed free worldwide.

The April edition is full of useful and interesting articles and features, including:

• Message from the Academy Director – results of a recent survey of senior practitioners who attended the Academy’s April 2007 Masters Forum with answers to the question "How do you learn to do your job?"


• Dr. Robert A Frosch, former NASA Administrator, answers Five Questions posed by APPEL Academy writers. Dr. Frosch served as the fifth NASA Administrator from 1977-1981, after which he became Vice President of General Motors (GM) in charge of Research Laboratories, a position he held until retiring in 1993. He is currently a Senior Associate at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs.


• Foundations of Aerospace at NASA – an introduction to the first building block of the Academy’s core curriculum. The course 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. The next session of Foundations will take place April 14-25, 2008, at Johnson Space Center.


• PM Challenge 2008 Roundup – results of the recent Project Management Challenge conference in Daytona Beach, Florida, co-sponsored by the Academy and attended by over 1,200 civil servants, contractors and members of the aerospace community who are involved in or interested in project management.


• Academy Assistance at Your Center– a link to the Academy’s resources and courses at NASA locations around the USA.


• NASA on the Hill – a summary of NASA Administrator Dr. Michael Griffin’s testimony in Washington, DC on the President’s FY2009 budget request for NASA – which “represents a substantial step forward in responding to the recommendations of the National Research Council’s first decadal survey of Earth Science.”


• Leadership Bookshelf – a review of Joseph Nye’s "The Power to Lead"


• A View from Outside – a review of the European Space Agency’s recent successful launch of the Jules Verne, the first of a new line of cargo-hauling Automotive Transfer Vehicles (ATVs), into low earth orbit from the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana.


• This Month in NASA History – A look back at Atlantis Shuttle Mission STS-76, when astronaut Shannon W. Lucid boarded Russian space station Mir on March 24, 1996 for a five month stay. This marked her place in history as the first U.S. woman to fly aboard the space station.


• Links to current ASK Magazine Features: "Leading Your Leaders," by Wayne Hale; "Dawn: Cooperation, Not Control," by Todd May; and "The Astronaut Glove Challenge," by Peter Homer.

ask the academy is a monthly eNewsletter published by NASA’s APPEL. The editor of ask the academy is Matt Kohut; webmaster is Matt Scott. To review the latest issue or to subscribe, visit http://appel.nasa.gov/academy/node/604.

Under NASA’s Office of the Chief Engineer, the Academy of Program/Project & Engineering Leadership (APPEL) provides leadership, advice, direction, and support for the development and learning of the NASA program/project management and engineering community. APPEL trains the technical workforce through a competency-based and experiential development process; promotes continuous learning through a blended learning model, which leverages the expertise of university and private industry partners; offers performance support to project teams through assessment, workshops, expert consulting, rapid deployment training, coaching, and mentoring; and facilitates the dissemination of lessons learned through online resources and communities of practice. The Director of APPEL at NASA is Dr. Edward Hoffman. For more information, visit http://appel.nasa.gov/.

Created in 1958 the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is America’s focal point for research, development and exploration of outer space. In 2005, the US President and Congress committed the United States to exploring the solar system and beyond: completing assembly of the International Space Station, flying the new Crew Exploration Vehicle no later than 2014, returning astronauts to the moon by the end of the next decade, and sending human missions to Mars and beyond. For over 50 years, NASA has been leading the world in the development and usage of advanced program and project management. Additional information about NASA can be found at www.nasa.gov.