NASA astronaut and CU-Boulder alumnus Vance Brand returned to campus last week and presented engineering student Sri Radha with a $10,000 scholarship from the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation. Radha (pictured above with Brand and CU astronaut-faculty Jim Voss and Joe Tanner) is a junior majoring in chemical and biological engineering and a participant in the Engineering Honors Program.
More than 150 students, staff and faculty packed the Andrews Hall common room for the presentation, including environmental engineering professor Angela Bielefeldt, who is a prior ASF scholarship winner, and a local elementary school student who had studied Brand's acheivements (the youngster is pictured at top right with Brand and CU top scholarship coordinator Deborah Viles).
Brand, who earned bachelor’s degrees in business and in aeronautical engineering at CU-Boulder in 1953 and 1960 respectively, was selected as a NASA astronaut in 1966. He flew on the 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, which has historical significance as the first international docking mission, and on three space shuttle missions.
He was the second astronaut to visit Boulder in a two-week period. Scott Carpenter (pictured at bottom right), who also earned a bachelor’s degree in aeronautical engineering from CU-Boulder and was the second American to orbit the Earth, in May 1962, returned to Boulder Sept. 20 for the 50th-anniversary rededication of the park that bears his name.
