University Libraries Promotion and Tenure Recognition

As a high school student considering my future educational and professional careers, I encountered the miniseries From the Earth to the Moon, documenting the history of the Apollo program. Always being a reader, I was led from the film to its written source material in the form of A Man on the Moon. Throughout my reading of the book, I was inspired by the collective sense of purpose and drive that propelled an entire country to devote itself to the singular ambition of landing a man on the moon. The feat alone was a monumental demonstration of the ability of teams of scientists and engineers to work together and achieve a goal greater than any individual. While much of our memory focuses on the courage of the astronauts who made the journey to the moon, this book also helps to demonstrate the contributions of the hundreds of thousands of individuals across the country, each playing an important role in allowing the Apollo missions to come to fruition. Eventually, the sense of awe I developed after being exposed to this chapter in history influenced me toward the field of engineering, so that I could try to make my own contribution toward the technological challenges facing our society. I hope that choosing this book for selection in the library's collection may help it bring the same inspiration to others that it brought to me.