Service Beyond The Stars: Inspiring The Next Generation Of Aggie Leaders

“I have a picture of my younger brother and me from around 1963,” Fossum recalls. “We’re sitting on an upside-down wagon that’s hanging from a tree branch. On the back of the picture, my mom wrote, ‘The rocket plane.’”

That inventiveness and love of all things science and space has shaped Fossum’s career for more than 40 years. These days, his boots are planted firmly on Earth, serving as vice president of Texas A&M University, chief operating officer of the Galveston Campus and superintendent of the Texas A&M Maritime Academy. Fossum joined Texas A&M following his retirement from NASA’s Johnson Space Center in 2017 after a long and eventful career.

But before then, he was just a kid in McAllen, Texas, who was fascinated with space.

Head In Outer Space

On July 20, 1969, Fossum and his family watched with fascination as Apollo 11 landed on the moon. “I remember that night, just watching on a little grainy black and white TV with my family,” Fossum recalls. “And when it was over, I was just pulsing with adrenaline. I walked out in the backyard alone, and I looked up at the moon that was hanging over my house. I was excited that I had just watched two Americans put footprints on the moon.”

What he saw inspired him and made him think that was something he’d like to do. But to those around him, the dream of traveling to space was nothing more than a pipe dream. So, he decided he would have to leave that dream behind. Or so he thought until a couple of Aggies changed the trajectory of his life.

The first was his high school science teacher Ruperto Gonzalez, who had attended Texas A&M but didn’t finish his degree. He noticed Fossum was struggling to find his path and wanted to help him find a future he could get excited about.

Mike, you’re an engineer. You just don’t know it yet. You’re going to be an engineer, and you’re going to be an Aggie engineer, and I’m going to make sure of it.

“You really love science. You’re good at math, even if you don’t love it, and you like solving problems. Mike, you’re an engineer. You just don’t know it yet,” Fossum recalls Gonzalez telling him. “And I said, ‘What’s an engineer?’ I mean, I’d heard the term, but I didn’t know any. And then he said, ‘You’re going to be an engineer, and you’re going to be an Aggie engineer, and I’m going to make sure of it.'”

And he did.

Joining The Keepers Of The Spirit

Fossum went with a group from McAllen on a long road trip to the College Station campus for a tour. And that was it for him. He applied to Texas A&M and was accepted, but because of his late acceptance, the dorms were full. After driving 400 miles up from McAllen to attend his New Student Conference, he needed to find a place to live.

After two fruitless days of searching, he was about to give up. He was on campus walking through the Quad, for what he thought was the final time, when he bumped into the second Aggie who would change his life – a friend from high school who was in the Corps of Cadets.

“I ran into a guy coming out of one of the dorms on the Quad, Earle Gallagher (class of ‘78), who was attending summer school. He was two years older than me and had been in my Boy Scout troop.” Gallagher asked him how things were going, and Fossum was honest with him. He was about to have to head back to McAllen and find another college. Gallagher had another suggestion.

“Dude, all you have to do is join the Corps and you get a dorm room, and they are fairly cheap,” Gallagher said. “You’re gonna have to have a haircut,” he said, noting Fossum’s almost shoulder-length hair.

“I thought about it for about three seconds, and I said, ‘How do I join?’” Gallagher led him to the Military Sciences Building and pointed him toward where he needed to go. “Just walk in that door down there and find the first person you see in uniform and tell him you want to join the Corps.” He also told Fossum to tell them he wanted to be in the Air Force outfit.

Though he struggled with his grades and advanced math classes at times, he pushed through, determined to succeed. While he initially joined the Corps to have an affordable place to live, it turned out to be the best place for him. He loved being one of the “Keepers of the Spirit” and being instilled with the importance of community, leadership and loyalty. Values he still holds dear today.

Good leadership involves all of the Aggie Core Values: Respect and Excellence, Leadership, Loyalty, Integrity, Selfless Service … The world is desperate for leaders who embody the values of Texas A&M University.

“Good leadership involves all of the Aggie Core Values: Respect and Excellence, Leadership, Loyalty, Integrity, Selfless Service. It’s easy to rattle them all off, but we really need to stop and think about them and what they mean,” he said. “The world is desperate for leaders who embody the values of Texas A&M University. There are great Aggie leaders all over the world — not just in the military or government — but in all sectors of life. These are Aggies that are out there making a difference in the world with those values as their foundation.

“Without the Corps, I wouldn’t have gone into the Air Force, and there is no way I could have later served as a NASA astronaut. None of that would have happened if I hadn’t been in the Corps: first out of necessity, and then I embraced it and really grew and benefited from it.”

Almost Living The Dream

After graduating with a degree in mechanical engineering in 1980, Fossum was commissioned as an officer in the U.S. Air Force. He then decided to pursue master’s degrees in systems engineering and space science. After graduate school, he talked the Air Force into detailing him to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. There, he supported space shuttle operations in the early days of the space shuttle program, starting with STS-3, the third shuttle flight. While working at NASA, he met two Air Force astronauts with engineering backgrounds, Jerry Ross and Ellison Onizuka. They encouraged him to apply to the U.S. Air Force Test Pilot School, a program from which they had both graduated, and train as a flight test engineer.

“Test Pilot School was an amazing adventure. I’d never been in a small airplane before, and I showed up as the youngest person in my class out of Edwards Air Force Base,” he said. “I knew I was in over my head and had so much to learn. Within weeks, I was strapping into supersonic jets and learning the whole engineering and science behind the art of flight tests.

“I wasn’t a top student in high school. I wasn’t a top student at A&M, but I got better at each step along the way,” Fossum said. “When I finally got this opportunity at Test Pilot School, I was highly motivated because I knew that I really needed to shine here in order to be successful. I focused on learning the material, which involved a lot of late nights and hard work.”

But he stuck with it, and once again, his perseverance and hard work pushed him toward success. He ended up spending eight years working in flight testing for the Air Force. And even though he enjoyed serving as a flight test engineer developing future aircraft and systems, he couldn’t get the dream of flying in space out of his mind.

During his time working in flight testing, he applied to the space shuttle program at NASA and was interviewed – and rejected – three times.

“I figured, three strikes and I’m out,” Fossum said. “It’s probably never going to work.” Fossum came to the decision that it was finally time to leave active duty and move back to Texas with his growing family.

But that left him with another big decision: should he continue to support military aviation as a contractor or attempt to work as an engineer at NASA supporting human spaceflight, even if he would never fly?

It was a question Fossum had to think and pray hard about. But he finally concluded that he could do it. “I wanted to work in the space program, even if I couldn’t fly. I really wanted to be there helping send humans into orbit, helping build a space station and helping put human footprints on Mars someday.”

Enjoying The Journey

He returned to NASA, and then, a few months after he had arrived, he worked on the redesign of the International Space Station. “What an amazing time to be there. With my previous experience at NASA, my years of flight testing, system integration, development and human interfaces had really toughened me up. It gave me a lot of experience with a lot of different technology on the aircraft side, and it’s the same on the spacecraft side.”

While working on the ground, he still kept applying to the space flight program and kept a positive attitude. “It’s still probably never going to work,” he remembers thinking. “But I’m not going to quit trying.”

And once again, his perseverance and belief in himself paid off. In 1998, after his seventh application and fifth interview, he was finally going to be an astronaut. During his time as an astronaut, he was on three space flights with more than 194 days in space and more than 48 hours in seven spacewalks. He logged over 2,000 hours in 35 different aircraft throughout the course of his career. His last mission was in 2011, when he served as the commander of the International Space Station. One of his favorite memories was officially opening the 2011 football season on the Jumbotron in Kyle Field from space.

Fossum’s career has taken some unexpected turns, and even though his path to becoming an astronaut was anything but direct, he always focused on what he loved: science and engineering, solving problems, inspiring others and striving to make a difference in the world.

He tells students who dream of being an astronaut to be willing to work hard to achieve their dreams and stand out from the crowd. “If you want to apply to the space program, first you have to be really passionate about it. If you’re not, you do not have a hope of standing out as one of the best. Astronauts can come from a lot of different backgrounds. There’s a lot of competition for these spots and you really need to stand out as being one of the best in your career field.

“In the last astronaut selection board that I supported, we had 18,000 applicants. This is always an incredibly amazing group of accomplished professionals and it was daunting to decide which few would get an interview, and even more challenging to decide on the final selections. In the end, only 12 people were selected as astronauts. The other 17,988 candidates were all great people who were working hard and climbing to the top in their careers.” Fossum understood their disappointment after being rejected six times on his journey to space.

“In your career, you’re going to run into a lot of noes. You’re going to run into failure. You’re going to fall on your face, but you’re not beaten until you don’t get back up. No doesn’t mean never. No means not yet. At all the different points in my career where somebody said no, I kept leaning in to find out how we could get to yes.”

The World Needs More Aggies

Back on Earth, Fossum has settled in this role at Texas A&M at Galveston and is excited to work with the next generation of Aggie leaders. His years of service in the military and with NASA have given him a special perspective on what it means to be a leader. He knows he has been blessed to live his childhood dream, and he loves his new mission to touch the future by helping today’s students achieve their dreams — wherever they may lead them.

“You know, I’m a little old-fashioned, but I’m proud of the fact that we’re a university that recognizes our very significant contributions to our nation as a whole. The world needs more Aggies. We need more Aggie engineers, business leaders, scientists, doctors, lawyers, teachers, government and public service leaders, neighbors and friends. We need more Aggie mariners. And that’s my particular job here on the Galveston Campus. And I think our nation needs more Aggies who understand a love for country, a love for fellow human beings, a respect for doing the right thing, and I’m proud to be part of it.”