Astronaut Sally Ride Named UCSD Professor

Astronaut Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, will join UC San Diego as a physics professor next month and is expected to be named director of university’s California Space Institute, a school official said Wednesday.

Ride, 38, will join the UCSD faculty as a full professor on July 1 and will be paid $64,000 a year, said Jackie Parker, spokeswoman for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The space institute is based at Scripps, and both institutions are part of the University of California.

Parker said Ride’s appointment as director of the space institute is expected to be announced Friday, after a meeting of the UC Board of Regents. The institute currently works with a $3.3-million annual research budget. It was created by the California Legislature in 1979. In addition to space research, the institute also meets with the state’s aerospace industry on the research and development of new technologies.

Although Ride was unavailable for comment on Wednesday, Scripps released a brief statement from her in which she expressed approval of her new positions. Ride is currently at Stanford University, where she is a fellow at the Center for International Security and Arms Control.

During her career as an astronaut with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, Ride flew in two space shuttle flights. She also was part of the team that investigated the accident of the space shuttle Challenger. Ride has been at Stanford since 1987. She holds several degrees from Stanford, including a doctorate in physics.