Foxcroft students meet Sally Ride

Sally Ride, former NASA astronaut, spoke to a full house at Foxcroft School on Tuesday, February 20, 2001. Dr. Ride was the first American woman in space and flew twice aboard the space shuttle Challenger. She spoke to a gathering of more than 550 Foxcroft students and faculty, friends, and community guests, about her experiences as an astronaut. She shared her observations of Earth's environment from space; her slide presentation showed a wide range of close-up shots of the Earth taken from Challenger: from the dark waves of the ocean at the bottom of the eye of a hurricane, to silt slipping from the delta into the sea off India, to variations in vegetation caused by differences in land-use policies, to the illumination of the entire eastern seaboard by city lights, to the devastation of massive forest fires in Brazil.

Dr. Ride's lecture opened Foxcroft's Interim term, a two-week period when Foxcroft students and faculty interrupt their regular studies to focus intensively and collectively on one subject. This year's Interim focuses on the environment.