LEWISTON – Paul Badeau was doing more than just shooting for the stars when he invited NASA Chief Sean O’Keefe to Lewiston.

Badeau, director of marketing for the Lewiston Auburn Economic Growth Council, hoped he could get a big-name speaker for the growth council’s annual meeting, but he also had local jobs in mind.

While attending a conference in Washington, D.C., last year he heard a lot about the need for technicians in emerging industries – including the space industry – and realized L-A was well positioned to fill that need.

“There are plenty of Ph.D candidates to work in emerging technical fields, but not enough skilled workers with two- and four-year degrees,” said Badeau. “They need people to operate the machinery, the robotics, computer-automated equipment and electron microscopes” in fields like nanotechnology, biotechnology and global positioning technologies.

The combined resources of Central Maine Community College and L-A College make L-A an ideal place to train workers for those kinds of jobs, he said.

“A lot was said time and again (at the Washington conference) about the need for these workers,” said Badeau. “I think there’s a lot of hope for communities like ours that have a community college and university system to really be able to train a workforce for jobs in those technologies.”

It’s a topic Badeau asked O’Keefe to address in his presentation. The annual meeting is set for Thursday, May 13, at the Bates College Gray Athletic Building. Tickets are $45 and the event is open to the public.

O’Keefe was appointed as administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in December 2001. He’s expected to talk about President George W. Bush’s space exploration program, the success of the Mars mission and an overview of the space shuttle program’s past and future.

“It’ll be of interest to hear how all these advances and technologies affect the average person,” said Badeau. “Is my life any different, or will it be any different, because we’ve been on Mars?”

Prior to coming to NASA, O’Keefe was a professor of business and government at Syracuse University and had been appointed secretary of the Navy under President George Bush in 1992. He also served as chief financial officer of the Department of Defense and held various positions within the Pentagon and U.S. Senate.

Past LAEGC speakers have included White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card, Newsweek columnist Allan Sloan and NewsHour with Jim Lehrer’s Paul Solman.

Tickets can be purchased by calling Badeau at 784-0161.

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