SEPTEMBER 2000
3 FSU ALUMS NAMED THIS YEARS GRADS MAFE GOOD
At this year's Homecoming, FSU will honor three graduates :
Larry Crow, a research mathematical statistician who is internationally recognized in the field of reliability growth;
Carolyn Griner, deputy director of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.; and
Lt. Gen. Kenneth Minihan, director of the National Security Agency.
Crow has three FSU degrees: in 1966, a bachelor's in mathematics and statistics; in 1967, a master's in statistics; and in 1971, a doctorate in probability and statistics.
He went on to create the foundation research in reliability growth models and methodology, the basis for U.S. defense standards and the standards in other nations.
He was director of reliability and safety at General Dynamics Advanced Technology Systems until recently, when he retired from General Dynamics and became vice president and senior science advisor, reliability and maintainability at IIT Research Institute.
Griner received a bachelor of science degree in astronautical engineering from Florida State in 1967. Her first experience at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center came when she was a coop student at FSU, and she went on to build a career there. Since then she has won NASA's highest honor, the Distinguished Service Medal.
Astronaut Norm Thagard, who is now an engineering professor at FSU, recalls that Griner was the payload manager for his 1985 SpaceLab 3 flight.
"She (is) very bright, energetic and competent," Thagard says of Griner's 34 years with the space program.
Minihan earned a bachelor's degree from FSU in 1966 and went through Air Force Intellligence to become head of the National Security Agency, where he was responsible for the code making and code breaking of U.S. intelligence operations.
Before his remarkable rise to general as an intelligence expert, in 1969-70, Minihan was a target intelligence officer in Vietnam, where his job was to "examine all the intelligence you have and then pick the targets to bomb."
He is a member of several boards of companies in advanced information technologies, and he often speaks to groups about the challenges to U.S. security in the 21st century.
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