Stanford, 1981
Steve Smith was an Honorary Inductee to the CoSIDA Academic All-America® Hall of Fame in 2007.
Steven Smith was a scholar athlete that always shot for the stars—literally. Growing up in San Jose, California, Smith was a seven-time high school and collegiate All-American in swimming and water polo. He chose to stay in California and attend the prestigious Stanford University to continue his studies in math and science, eventually earning a total of three degrees there. He was a two-time NCAA Champion at Stanford in water polo and was captain of the 1980 NCAA Championship team. In 1981 he graduated with a B.S. in electrical engineering and then continued on to earn a master of science, also in electrical engineering, in 1982 and finally a master’s degree in business administration in 1987.
While completing his education at Stanford Smith worked for IBM in the Large Scale Integration (semiconductor) Technology Group in San Jose as a technical group leader from 1982 until 1985. Following a leave to pursue graduate studies Smith returned to IBM's Hardware and Systems Management Group as a product manager until 1989. After 1989 he joined NASA in the Mission Operations Directorate. In 1992 he pursued his hopes of becoming an astronaut completing one year of astronaut training, and by September of 1993 Smith became the first member of his class to receive a flight assignment. Since then Smith has become a veteran of four space flights covering 16 million miles and seven space walks totaling 49 hours and 25 minutes. Smith's spacewalk time places him in the top five on the all-time American and World spacewalk duration lists.
In 2007, Smith went on a detached assignment serving as the NASA Automated Transfer Vehicle Launch Package Manager for the ISS Program. He has earned a NASA Outstanding Leadership Medal, a NASA Space Flight Medal, NASA Exceptional Service Medal, IBM Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, IBM Outstanding Community Service Award and has served as a board member of Special Olympics Texas.