We sat around one night and thought that people are going to look back and say, I can't imagine there was a lot of excitement about HER going up!

She received her bachelor's degree in education and history from Framingham State College in 1970 and also a Master of Arts from Bowie State University in 1978. Out of the initial applicant pool 114 semi-finalists were nominated by state territorial and agency review panels. "
In the autumn of that year McAuliffe and Morgan each took a year-long leave of absence from teaching in order to train for a space shuttle mission in early 1986.

She received her bachelor's degree in education and history from Framingham State College in 1970 and also a Master of Arts from Bowie State University in 1978. In 1985 McAuliffe was selected from more than 11000 applicants to participate in the NASA Teacher in Space Project and was scheduled to become the first teacher in space. As a member of mission STS-51-L Christa McAuliffe was planning to conduct experiments and teach two lessons from Space Shuttle Challenger.