Guion Bluford Jr. and Donald Shepperd Elected to Board

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. (2/7/00) -- Dr. Guion Bluford, Jr., and retired Air Force Maj. Gen. Donald Shepperd have been elected to the board of trustees at The Aerospace Corporation. Three trustees have left the board after completing the maximum of three consecutive 3-year terms. They are John -Erlenborn, Dr. G.E.R. Kinnear II and Dr. Percy Pierre. The new trustees were elected at the December board meeting at the company's headquarters in El Segundo, Calif.

Bluford, the nation's first black astronaut, is vice president and general manager of the Science and Engineering Group, Aerospace Sector, at the Federal Data Corporation (FDC), Cleveland, Ohio.

Before joining FDC he was a NASA mission specialist and payload commander on four space shuttle missions. He was selected to be in the first class of shuttle astronauts in 1978 and in 1983, aboard the shuttle Challenger, became the nation's first African American to fly in space. He made three more flights, logging more than 688 hours in space.

Bluford served 29 years in the Air Force, including time as a fighter pilot in Vietnam. He has more than 5,200 hours of flight time in 10 different aircraft. He retired as a colonel in 1993. He holds a B.S. in aerospace engineering from Pennsylvania State University, an M.B.A. from the University of Houston, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in aerospace engineering from the Air Force Institute of Technology.

Bluford is a board member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics and serves the National Research Council as a member of its Aeronautics and Space Engineering board. Among his many honors is his 1997 induction into the International Space Hall of Fame.

Shepperd, a former director of the Air National Guard, is president of The Shepperd Group, Inc., a consulting firm that addresses issues related to defense, strategic planning, executive leadership and information technology.

He provides radio commentary on request for ABC Radio in New York and is an ad hoc member of the Air Force Scientific Advisory Board.

Shepperd retired in 1998 from the Pentagon, where he oversaw a $4.2 billion yearly budget as Air National Guard director and commanded more than 110,000 personnel nationwide. He was the architect of "CyberGuard," a program to bring the Air National Guard into the world of high-technology embedded information systems and fiberoptics with distributed communications and distance learning capabilities.

A 1962 Air Force Academy graduate, Shepperd served in the Air Force in Germany and Vietnam and flew 247 fighter combat missions in Southeast Asia.

He holds an M.S. in personnel management from Troy State University and attended the Air War College at Maxwell Air Force Base. He was the first Air National Guard research fellow at the Center for Aerospace Doctrine, Research and Education and wrote a book on fighter aircrew training in the national guard.