Sally Ride's educational legacy lives on 30 years after spaceflight

Mary Beth Marklein | USA TODAY

Laurie Leshin had just graduated from high school in June 1983 when astronaut Sally Ride blasted into the sky and the history books as the first American woman to fly in space.

"It was a big deal to see that barrier broken," says Leshin, a former NASA executive and a geochemist who studies water in the solar system. "She was a hero of mine and (her spaceflight) was one of the things that drew me to a career in space."

Ride died last year of pancreatic cancer at age 61, but her legacy lives on. On Monday, her contributions to science and science education will be honored in a tribute at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C.

Ride, who was part of the first U.S. class of female astronauts in 1978, flew into space twice, in 1983 and 1984, both times on board the space shuttle Challenger. She was the only person to serve on both panels investigating the failures of the 1986 Challenger and 2003 Columbia tragedies.

Since her historic mission, 55 women, including cosmonauts, astronauts, payload specialists and foreign nationals, have flown in space with NASA. And since 2001, Sally Ride Science, an organization she co-founded, has aimed to build a pipeline of students who can step into careers in the fast-growing fields of science, technology, engineering and math, often known as STEM.

Ride's vision was simple: Through books, festivals, teacher training and classroom activities, she sought to share with middle-school students the joys of scientific discovery. Along the way, she hoped more kids — especially girls and minorities — would find their passion.

A key component of Sally Ride Science is giving young girls an idea of what a successful scientist looks like. Sally Ride Science festivals alone have reached more than 52,000 girls.

"She opened up that pathway to many more women because she was a role model," says Karen Flammer, a space physicist at the University of California-San Diego and a co-founder of Sally Ride Science. "That gave her insight into what students, young people, really need."

A growing body of evidence suggests that Ride was onto something. A recent study by Wake Forest University economics professor Amanda Griffith found, for example, that male and female college students earned higher grades in classes where their gender is in the minority if they share their instructor's gender.

"The research is suggesting that there's something there in the role model," says Griffith, who concluded that female class performance could be improved by increasing the number of female faculty members in male-dominated departments.

While Flammer and others say the climate has improved for women, a gender disparity remains in most STEM fields. Although women fill 48% of all jobs in the U.S. economy, they hold just 24% of STEM jobs, a 2011 federal report shows.

Similarly, women represent 57% of the college undergraduate population yet are vastly underrepresented in most STEM fields and on many campuses where STEM education is the focus. At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., where Leshin is dean of science, women were 29% of undergraduates last year. Still, that was an improvement over 2003, when 25% of undergrads were female. This fall, women will make up 31% of the incoming freshman class. At MIT, the share of female undergrads also has inched upward, from 42% in 2003 to 45% last year.

On many campuses, efforts are underway to keep girls and women in the STEM pipeline. St. Joseph's University in Philadelphia this month graduated its first class of McNulty scholars, a program to help women in STEM fields develop leadership skills. At the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Va., a federally funded project offers programming to help young female STEM faculty through one of the roughest stages of an academic career — between getting a doctorate and becoming an established scientist.

June marks another important anniversary of woman in space. Fifty years ago, cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space when she orbited the Earth 48 times as chief pilot of the USSR's Vostok 6.

Although that occasion is often overlooked in U.S. history books, "Sally was very aware that she was standing on another woman's shoulders," Leshin says, adding that Ride knew she had a "unique responsibility" to women and girls in the USA.

"Sally was a very private person and didn't relish being a celebrity, but she realized her place in history," says Maria Zuber, a professor at MIT. "So she really used her celebrity as a force for good."