Dr. Maurer has taught aviation and space courses at the college level 
      since 1978, served as Orange

      Coast College's Professor of Aviation & Space, and teaches graduate 
      courses in the MAS program for Embry-Riddle

      Aeronautical University. He is an active pilot who owns a Cessna R172 and 
      has been flying since 1969. He holds a

      Commercial certificate-Airplane SE Land & Sea, Multi-engine Land, Instrument 
      Airplane, Glider; he also holds a

      Rotorcraft-Helicopter, Cessna Citation CE-500 ratings, and FEX(w). Dr. Maurer 
      is a Certified Flight Instructor (CFII & MEI) and holds Advanced and 
      Instrument Ground Instructor ratings. In his twenty three years of teaching 
      private pilot ground school, he has introduced over 2,100 people to aviation. 
      He is a member of the Challenger Center, American Institute of Aeronautics 
      and Astronautics, the Civil Air Patrol, and has been the faculty advisor 
      to OCC's chapters of the Planetary Society and the Research Club. He is 
      the author of The Dream Is Alive: Space Flight and Operations in Earth Orbit 
      (Geosync, ©1991) and is currently working on a new book on the International 
      Space Station. His current research interests include advanced cockpit design, 
      technology development programs and international crew coordination issues 
      aboard the International Space Station, and applying Crew Resource Management 
      techniques to hospital staff in the ER and ICU. 
      
Maurer grew up in Parma, Ohio graduating from Cuyahoga Community College 
        in 1972 and went on to Kent State University where he received his B.S. 
        in Education in 1973. He received his Master of Arts in Technology in 
        1976. While pursuing further graduate work at California State University 
        at Long Beach and the University of California at Irvine, Dr. Maurer became 
        the youngest full-time instructor at the Coast Community College District 
        in 1977. Dr. Maurer served as the Dean of Technology and Dean of Career 
        Education from 1984 until 1995. He received his Ph.D. from UCLA in 1986 
        in Organizational and Administrative Studies in Higher Education with 
        a cognate in Computer Information Systems at the Anderson Graduate School 
        of Management. His dissertation on the obstacles to the Implementation 
        of Computer-aided Instruction helped define the data and network specifications 
        for the OCC's $11 million Technology Center, construction of which he 
        oversaw. The resulting specification of having a Unix-based network available 
        with a computer and internet access on every instructor's desk and the 
        first internet lab in California foresaw the huge expansion that was soon 
        to become the modern internet. 
      
He is an international lecturer and has participated in four annual technical 
        workshops in the Republic of China,

        sponsored by Community Colleges for International Development, both as 
        project team leader and lecturer. For this work, he received four citations 
        from the Taiwan Minister of Education. He serves as a consultant to the 
        aerospace industry and has written many articles and commentaries on the 
        space program in addition to lecturing to community groups about the U.S. 
        space program.