He Helped Launch NASA’s Efforts to Recruit Minorities

Charles Lang of Los Angeles has always tried to promote minority participation in the sciences. Last month, the retired English and education professor received Tuskegee University’s Distinguished Alumni Merit Award and was also honored by West Los Angeles College and community leaders for his lifelong achievements.

Lang’s achievements are part of a career that spans more than 50 years. During the Korean War, he served as the first black combat photojournalist before going on to command integrated troops. After the war, he returned to Los Angeles and taught elementary school. At that time, he began to encourage students to think about the future of space travel.

“I’ve always enjoyed teaching and working with people,” he said. “I also liked having the opportunity to motivate others to achieve.”

Lang moved on to work for the Watts Skills Center. While on the staff there, he became familiar with a number of local aerospace companies and discovered a lack of minority involvement in space programs. As a result, he produced the multimedia filmstrip “Equal Opportunity in Space Science” which would later play a key role in influencing NASA to consider minorities and women for its programs.

“I have always been interested in aerospace and flying,” the retired professor said. “When I started teaching, I tried to teach students to use their education and minds to achieve success.”

In 1969, Lang became a professor at West Los Angeles College in Culver City and continued his minority participation campaign. His hard work paid off when he was asked by NASA officials to help recruit minorities and women astronauts for space shuttle missions.

As a recruiter, he says he was able to lend credibility and enhance affirmative action hiring for space shuttle missions. In recognition of his work, Lang was awarded a silver medallion that was carried into space by the first black astronaut, Dr. Ronald McNair. He was also nominated by the Los Angeles Community College District as a candidate for the Teacher in Space program on the ill-fated Challenger mission.

Although he has retired from the classroom, Lang is once again a candidate, this time for the Aerospace Ambassadors program. If he is accepted, he will participate in a joint space mission with the former Soviet Union sometime next year.

Lang attributes much of his success to his parents. “What I have accomplished is due to my parents, who were very educational,” he said. “I am just paying them back for the care and concern they had for me.”

George Olah, a professor of chemistry at USC, has won the American Chemical Society’s Richard C. Tolman Medal for outstanding contributions to the field of chemistry.

Olah, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, will receive the medal and a citation on March 20 at the ACS’s annual meeting in Los Angeles. He is an expert in the fields of theoretical organic chemistry, synthetic organic chemistry and hydrocarbon chemistry. He also is chairman of the Donald and Katherine Loker Chair in Organic Chemistry. He lives in Beverly Hills.

Jay Jurkowitz has been elected president of the Westside chapter of B’nai Zion Western Region.

Jurkowitz, a charter member of the Westside chapter, has previously served as vice president/secretary and historian.

Linda Sarna, an assistant professor at the UCLA School of Nursing, has been awarded a $75,000 grant from the American Cancer Society.

She received a professorship in oncology nursing to further her research work in life issues and nursing care needs of people with lung cancer.

The grant is the highest honor given to nurses in the academic field by the society.

Sinai Temple and the University of Judaism honored Milo and Isabel Mandel with an Award of Merit today. The Mandels, longtime supporters of the University of Judaism, were recognized for their leadership in the Jewish community at a tribute breakfast held this morning at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles.