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CSOC To Unveil Innovative ?Storefront? Program at Prairie View: Lockheed Martin is moving some of its work on a major NASA contract to colleges across the United States, a company official said. Under the new program, dubbed Storefront, the company will open facilities at historically black universities, where students will be hired to work on NASA's Consolidated Space Operations Contract (CSOC), Nancy Patterson, CSOC engineering director at Johnson Space Center, Houston, said. Students at the universities will do software engineering, and the center will be run by a small business subcontractor to CSOC, Patterson said. Lockheed Martin Space Operations, Houston, won the CSOC contract in September 1998. The plan to consolidate 17 contracts across five NASA centers is expected to save the agency $1.4 billion over 10 years. The first of the Storefronts will open at Prairie View A&M in September. The historically black university is located in Prairie View, Texas, north of Houston, Patterson said. Students in the school's computer science program will work about 20 hours per week around their class schedule, Patterson said. CSOC is finalizing the guidelines for hiring, she said, but applicants must maintain a minimum grade point average while carrying a minimum semester course load.
The fall semester begins in late August, and the faculty at Prairie View will select candidates for interviews before students return to campus,
Charles Hines, president of Prairie View, said. The on-campus facility will be able to accommodate 35 part-time workers, but CSOC will limit the number to 15 student-employees in the first year, Patterson said. Start-up costs for the Prairie View site are expected to be about $30,000, which will be paid by CSOC, Andrea Pierce, a CSOC spokeswoman told Space News in a written reply. "We will have no problem filling out the numbers that CSOC wants," Hines said. Work at Prairie View will focus on the 6.5 million lines of computer code needed to run NASA's mission control center and the integrated planning system at Johnson Space Center.? This is not simulation work," Patterson said. "The students will be doing work directly in support of the responsibilities we have at [Johnson Space Center.] They will be troubleshooting software problems we have to fix, and develop fixes for those problems." CSOC expects to save about 40 percent on labor costs by using the students, who will work for a lower hourly rate than full time employees, Pierce said. The students will be responsible for a very small percentage of CSOC work, about 200,000 lines of the 33 million lines of code CSOC oversees for NASA, she said.
Cimarron, a software development company in Houston, will manage the Prairie View Storefront. Under CSOC, Cimarron has been responsible for maintenance and operations at mission control center, Roz Doyle, chief executive officer of Cimarron, said. Cimarron will train the students and oversee their work, Doyle said. As the students become more familiar with the task, they will be given more complex work.
After the Prairie View Storefront is established, CSOC will move the program to other historically black universities located near other NASA
centers in the United States, Patterson said. Each school will have unique work based on the requirements of the NASA center. The next Storefront will be set up at Alabama A&M University, Huntsville, Ala., to support work at Marshall Space Flight Center. Madison Research
Corp. will run the center. The Storefront program will run the length of the CSOC contract, Patterson said. CSOC hopes to attract more college computer science and engineering graduates into the space field, Patterson said, but students hired to do work at a Storefront are not guaranteed a job with CSOC upon graduation. The program also helps CSOC fulfill its commitments to work with small or disadvantaged businesses and supports NASA's goal of having 1 percent of all prime and subcontractor monies directed to support historically black
schools or minority institutions, Pierce said. (Space News)
Space Industry News
CSOC To Unveil Innovative ?Storefront? Program at Prairie View: Lockheed Martin is moving some of its work on a major NASA contract to colleges across the United States, a company official said. Under the new program, dubbed Storefront, the company will open facilities at historically black universities, where students will be hired to work on NASA's Consolidated Space Operations Contract (CSOC), Nancy Patterson, CSOC engineering director at Johnson Space Center, Houston, said. Students at the universities will do software engineering, and the center will be run by a small business subcontractor to CSOC, Patterson said. Lockheed Martin Space Operations, Houston, won the CSOC contract in September 1998. The plan to consolidate 17 contracts across five NASA centers is expected to save the agency $1.4 billion over 10 years. The first of the Storefronts will open at Prairie View A&M in September. The historically black university is located in Prairie View, Texas, north of Houston, Patterson said. Students in the school's computer science program will work about 20 hours per week around their class schedule, Patterson said. CSOC is finalizing the guidelines for hiring, she said, but applicants must maintain a minimum grade point average while carrying a minimum semester course load.
The fall semester begins in late August, and the faculty at Prairie View will select candidates for interviews before students return to campus,
Charles Hines, president of Prairie View, said. The on-campus facility will be able to accommodate 35 part-time workers, but CSOC will limit the number to 15 student-employees in the first year, Patterson said. Start-up costs for the Prairie View site are expected to be about $30,000, which will be paid by CSOC, Andrea Pierce, a CSOC spokeswoman told Space News in a written reply. "We will have no problem filling out the numbers that CSOC wants," Hines said. Work at Prairie View will focus on the 6.5 million lines of computer code needed to run NASA's mission control center and the integrated planning system at Johnson Space Center.? This is not simulation work," Patterson said. "The students will be doing work directly in support of the responsibilities we have at [Johnson Space Center.] They will be troubleshooting software problems we have to fix, and develop fixes for those problems." CSOC expects to save about 40 percent on labor costs by using the students, who will work for a lower hourly rate than full time employees, Pierce said. The students will be responsible for a very small percentage of CSOC work, about 200,000 lines of the 33 million lines of code CSOC oversees for NASA, she said.
Cimarron, a software development company in Houston, will manage the Prairie View Storefront. Under CSOC, Cimarron has been responsible for maintenance and operations at mission control center, Roz Doyle, chief executive officer of Cimarron, said. Cimarron will train the students and oversee their work, Doyle said. As the students become more familiar with the task, they will be given more complex work.
After the Prairie View Storefront is established, CSOC will move the program to other historically black universities located near other NASA
centers in the United States, Patterson said. Each school will have unique work based on the requirements of the NASA center. The next Storefront will be set up at Alabama A&M University, Huntsville, Ala., to support work at Marshall Space Flight Center. Madison Research
Corp. will run the center. The Storefront program will run the length of the CSOC contract, Patterson said. CSOC hopes to attract more college computer science and engineering graduates into the space field, Patterson said, but students hired to do work at a Storefront are not guaranteed a job with CSOC upon graduation. The program also helps CSOC fulfill its commitments to work with small or disadvantaged businesses and supports NASA's goal of having 1 percent of all prime and subcontractor monies directed to support historically black
schools or minority institutions, Pierce said. (Space News)
