“I feel called to be an educator,” Jones said in a June 25 news release sent out by UHCL.
Before Jones ever stepped foot on the UHCL campus, he was a missions planning and operations officer in the public affairs office for NASA.
He took the opportunity to teach at UHCL when Alfred Neumann, the university’s first president, offered him a job.Through his connections with NASA, Jones was able to successfully make his mark on the university.
He helped launch the Aerospace Institute graduate program, which began in 1976 and was the only program open to both UH and UHCL students.
The 50 people who were admitted into the inaugural program were able to attend briefings, presentations, field experiences and site visits to the Johnson Space Center and to Ellington Air Force Base. Jones, who taught math and science education courses throughout the school year and focused solely on the Aerospace Institute in the summer, slowly saw the program grow.
“[The Aerospace Institute] was developing educators to prepare for a career in aerospace,” Jones said in the release. “The Institute is what kept me here. The support from NASA was endless—including from crew members and astronauts.”
Over the decades, Jones has been a staple at UHCL, and the constant collaboration with NASA has helped him net a number of extraordinary relics, including space heat shields from the Apollo, Gemini and Mercury crafts. Being the teacher he is, however, he has decided to donate them to Space Center Houston so others can enjoy and learn from them.
Jones has always tried his best to reach as many people as possible. He has even co-authored 28 sciences texts for elementary-age children.
Now that he has passed the 45-year mark with UHCL, Jones still has the passion to keep going. This fall, he will be teaching theories of educational psychology, he said in the release, and he has no plans of slowing down.
“I’m not retiring because I’m still having fun,” Jones said. “My students energize me every time I am in the classroom, every time they send me an email, every time they give me a call and engage about class.”
