Jim McMurtray is the retired Executive Director of the National Alliance of State Science and Mathematics Coalitions. (NASSMC), a network of 42 state coalitions of business, education, and policy leadership established in the mid nineties to improve results in science 
technology engineering, and mathematics education. He joined NASSMC after serving for 20 years as a contractor to NASA’s Education Division (NASA Aerospace Education Services Program). During that time he presented lectures, workshops and symposia on NASA’s space science and astronomy missions (Voyager, Hubble, Galileo, COBE, etc. ) and on other aerospace related topics throughout the United States and in Mexico, Venezuela and Puerto Rico.
McMurtray served as an instructor in NASA’s Space Flight Participant Program in 1985, conducting seminars in space science and NASA future programs for the 114 candidates of the original Teacher in Space Project. He participated as a speaker at the Launch Conference of STS 51B on April 29, 1985. In August of 1983 he served as part of the NASA support team hosting the surviving members of the Tuskegee Airmen at the launch of Space Shuttle Mission STS 8. As a representative of NASA, he was involved in the planning and execution of the first NASA/NASSMC Linking Leaders Workshop in 1996. From 1981 to 2000 he conducted yearly national summer workshops for teachers at NASA’s Stennis Space Center on the Gulf Coast.
In April 2004, McMurtray presented testimony to the President’s Commission on Implementation of U.S. Space Exploration Policy, (Moon, Mars and Beyond) citing the urgent need to address the STEM education crisis with bold action and the full resources of the science community. Over the past thirty years he has spoken on science issues at universities, professional organizations, schools, conferences and conventions throughout the United States and participated in Capitol Hill briefings to legislators on science and education.
A former planetarium director and teacher of astronomy, he has been actively involved in reform efforts in science and mathematics education for over four decades. He is the author of Barbarian Science (1999), a humorous look at science literacy in America, and the creator of Starlight (1981), a nationally distributed planetarium show on the physics of stars. McMurtray has written six novels, Kicked (2018), Instrument (2016), Pathogen (2015), A Strange Detached Fragment (2015), Accountable (2014 and The Ice and the Stars (2009).
Jim and his wife Donna live in the Virginia suburbs of Washington, DC. They enjoy a good relationship in spite of her inexplicable appreciation for fantasy fiction and her past history as an accountant. They have five grown children, nine grandchildren and two great grandchildren.
