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Ernie Maurer, Ph.D. Orange Coast College |
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.