Stanford Honored Alumnus, Astronaut Sally Ride

PALO ALTO, CA — The first U.S. woman in space known for her diligent work ethic never had a free ride, but Stanford etched her memory on campus with her name on a student residence.

Stanford alumnus Sally Ride was honored on campus a week ago with more than 100 members of the Stanford community and her family on hand, the university news service reported.

Ride earned four Stanford degrees – two undergraduate degrees in English and physics and two graduate degrees in physics – before becoming one of the most famous and recognizable aeronautical women in the world.

For those in the know, Ride is a university professor, entrepreneur, author and champion of STEM education for women and minorities, the news service added. She was best known for her historic flight aboard the space shuttle Challenger in 1983, when she became the first American woman to go into space. She died in 2012 after having founded Sally Ride Science to inspire young people to pursue careers in science, technology, engineering and math. She was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2013.

Stanford ensured that Ride will always be remembered at her alma mater by naming the former Serra House student residence in the Stern Hall complex in her honor.

Her mother, Joyce, was among those who spoke about Ride and her legacy. Also speaking was Provost Persis Drell, who met Ride in the late 1980s when Ride worked with Drell’s late father, Sidney Drell, at the Stanford Center for International Security and Arms Control. It's now the Center for International Security and Cooperation.

Drell told the crowd: “At the time when Sally was at Stanford, she was such a celebrity that they had to keep her name off the CISAC roster, and she was in an unlabeled office because they were worried that she would be stalked and her work constantly interrupted.”