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Dr. Woodrow Whitlow

Associate Administrator for Mission Support at NASA (Retired)

Dr. Woodrow Whitlow Jr. is an American space scientist, is an American space scientist, formerly the Associate Administrator for Mission Support at NASA. He was appointed to this position by NASA administrator Charles Bolden on February 3, 2010.

He was the Director of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) John H. Glenn Research Center at Lewis Field in Cleveland, Ohio. Appointed to this position effective December 25, 2005, he was responsible for planning, organizing and directing the activities required to accomplish the missions assigned to the center.

While managing an annual budget of approximately $500 million, he oversees a workforce of approximately 1,680 civil service employees that is supported by approximately 1,580 contractors. The center has 24 major facilities and over 500 specialized research facilities located at the 350-acre Cleveland site and the 6,400-acre Plum Brook Station site in Sandusky, Ohio.

From September 2003 through December 2005, Dr. Whitlow served as the Deputy Director of the NASA John F. Kennedy Space Center. There his duties included assisting the director in determining and implementing center policy and in managing and implementing the center's missions and agency program responsibilities in the areas of processing, launch, and recovery of launch vehicles; processing of spacecraft; and acquisition of launch services. Prior to this appointment as Deputy Director, he served as the Director of Research and Technology at the Glenn Research Center.

Dr. Whitlow began his professional career in 1979 as a research scientist at the NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia. He assumed various positions of increasing responsibility before moving to the Glenn Research Center in 1998. In 1994, he served as Director of the Critical Technologies Division, Office of Aeronautics, at NASA Headquarters.

He has also been awarded U.S. Black Engineer of the Year in Government, the NASA Exceptional Service Medal, NASA Equal Opportunity Honor Medal, the (British) Institution of Mechanical Engineers' William Sweet Smith Prize and the Presidential Rank Award of Meritorious Executive.

[3]. Dr. Whitlow earned Bachelor of Science (1974), Master of Science (1975), and Doctor of Philosophy (1979) degrees in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and began his professional career in 1979 as a research scientist at the NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, before moving to positions at NASA Lewis Research Center and NASA Kennedy Space Center, where he was deputy director before returning to NASA Glenn to serve as director. He has written nearly 40 technical papers, most in the areas of unsteady transonic flow and aeroelasticity.

Dr. Whitlow has received numerous awards, including U.S. Black Engineer of the Year in Government, NASA Exceptional Service Honor Medal, NASA Equal Opportunity Honor Medal, the (British) Institution of Mechanical Engineers William Sweet Smith Prize and the Presidential Rank of Meritorious Executive. The American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics named him an associate fellow in 1993 and a fellow in 2010.


Panel Information

Wednesday, August 2

1:30 PM EST

FTI Spotlight: Agree to Disagree- Respectfully Navigating Disharmony to Avoid Damage to Professional Relationships.

Conflict is uncomfortable and unpleasant. It is all around us and we cannot avoid it, regardless of how much colleagues might disagree with each other, they still need to coexist. In cases where workmates stand on different sides of a disagreement, they need to master techniques to keep conflict in one area from spiraling into places where they share common ground. In this session, participants will learn how to maximize their cognitive effort and move from trying to eliminate conflict to figure out how to make conflict better, and get the work done.

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