State Finalist for Shuttle Flight : S.D. Teacher One Step Closer to Space

Gloria McMillan’s fascination with the heavens started when she was a ninth-grade bulletin board monitor, clipping newspaper articles about the Soviet Sputnik satellite when it was launched in 1957.

Twenty-eight years have passed, and McMillan is still a stargazer, but with one difference: The 40-year-old, La Jolla High School English teacher has a good shot at becoming the first private citizen in space.

State schools Supt. Bill Honig announced at a Los Angeles press conference Friday that McMillan and William Dillon, a San Bruno science, math and industrial arts teacher, were chosen as California’s finalists to fly on a 1986 space shuttle mission aboard the Challenger.

McMillan and Dillon were chosen from 930 California applicants. The astronaut hopefuls applied for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s “Teacher in Space” program in January and found out 19 days ago that they were among the state’s five semifinalists.

The two California teachers will now compete with 118 of their elementary and secondary school colleagues from around the country for the coveted chance to blast off into orbit on Jan. 22.

“It’s really exciting, and it’s really an incredible honor,” McMillan said in an interview. “There are 166,000 teachers in California, and to represent them is wonderful. I’m ecstatic, I’m overwhelmed, I’m overjoyed. This is wonderful.”

The press conference was held at the Museum of

Science and Industry, where McMillan said she found a wealth of ideas for the experiment she will perform if she is chosen by NASA to take off in the Challenger.

McMillan said her proposed project was to turn the “Teacher-in-Space” program into a student-centered program, letting the students design experiments. She said she would like to select projects from among those proposed, then carry them out while hooked up by telephone and display screen to the classroom.

“One of the things (the museum) displayed was a picture of communities taken from the satellites,” she said. “You can imagine how exciting it would be to say, ‘Hello, San Diego,’ and flash a picture of San Diego on the home screen and then begin to talk with students in the classroom. The technology is available and affordable.”

McMillan’s husband, James, and sons Scott, 21, and Shawn, 18, are exuberant about the opportunity before her. “My husband sees himself as my first-stage booster, and my students and my principal see themselves as my second-stage boosters,” she said.

“I’m stoked,” said Scott McMillan. “We’re really excited. She’s not up (in space) yet, but she will be. You know, she’s an interesting lady, an adventurer. She’s really into the humanities, Homer’s ‘Odyssey,’ going out and adventuring and coming back and teaching people about it.”

In the last several months, the McMillan household has become a veritable archive of space information, Scott said, with books such as “Exploring the Earth and the Cosmos” by Isaac Asimov, and “The Space Shuttle Operator’s Manual” strewn about the living room.

“There’s whole stacks of them (space books),” Scott said Friday afternoon, as he awaited his mother’s return from Los Angeles. “She’s been reading voraciously.”

But students at La Jolla High School were unaware that McMillan’s career as a space explorer could soon be launched.

“The students here really didn’t know,” said Vice Principal Joy McAllister, “although the fact that she was not here today pretty much told the story. Most of the teachers know and were elated. She’s just a great person, and we’re thrilled it could happen to one of our teachers.”

Since the announcement three weeks ago that the San Diego teacher was a semifinalist, she has received cards, letters and gifts from local well-wishers. One Point Loma High School student sent her a T-shirt bearing a silk-screened picture of the shuttle Challenger blasting off, and a retired teacher living in a local convalescent hospital wrote that “I was just the kind of person she’d like to see represent teachers in outer space,” McMillan said.

McMillan and William Dillon were chosen by a 10-member committee of four state education consultants, a PTA state representative, the 1985 teacher of the year, a private school representative, the student member of the state school board, Honig and Deputy State Supt. Dave Dawson.

The group chose Robert Payton --a Redding physical education teacher--as a backup candidate.

Applicants had to write eight essays describing such topics as their professional development, teaching philosophy, community involvement, the experiment or project they wished to carry out in space, and why they wanted to be the first private citizen in space.

The two finalists will travel to Washington in June for one week of screening and interviews. NASA officials will announce the 10 national semifinalists in July, and the winner will be announced in September, a spokeswoman for Honig said.

The wait will be difficult, McMillan said, but just getting this far was worth the effort.

“You know, I’ll be 41 on April 30,” McMillan said. “What a birthday present this is.”