Leland Melvin, NASA

Each month Einstein Fellows get together to talk about business and what is happening in the fellowship. We meet at different agencies so that we can see where each of us work and find different places around the DC area that are involved in education and education policy.

This month we met at NASA Headquarters in SW DC.  Our special guest speaker was Leland Melvin, NASA Associate Administrator for Education.  He shared with us an incredible story of how his life got to where it is now.

As a young man, he wanted to play football, which he did in college and professionally.  During college he had an injury and while he was healing, a mentor suggested he take some engineering classes.  His response was, "Why, I only want to play football."  But he took the classes anyway and ended up getting a degree in material engineering.  After college another injury took him out of football and he was encouraged to apply to be an astronaut.  He did and was accepted.  But during training, he was injured and lost his hearing.  This stopped him from going into space (for a time) and got him involved in educational outreach.  There are many details that I am leaving out.  The main thing I took away from his story is that he thought he knew what he wanted to do - play football, but life took him on many different turns and all of them somehow prepared him for where he is now.  He has had many wonderful experiences and great disappointments and all of them have lead him to a place where he does what he loves and that is to help  people to "believe, inspire, and reach higher."

Leland is seated, the third from the left.  The rest are Einstein Fellows.

Leland as he is telling us the story of how in high school football he played wide end receiver.  The game is tied and the ball is thrown to him and...he misses it!  Unknown to him there is a pro football talent scout watching.  His coach, instead of pulling him out of the game, sends him back telling him that he can do it.  The ball comes to him again and this time, he catches it and makes the winning score.  His message was that sometimes we need someone to believe in us and give us a second, (or third or fourth) chance in life.