You would never know the guy with the big hat out weeding MDC’s native plant garden on his hands and knees was a former training engineer and quality manager at Kennedy Space Center, or later, the former director of institutional research and associate vice president at Seminole State College.
Mark Morgan spent decades in the workforce building teams and promoting quality processes. Now retired, the Florida Master Naturalist and Master Gardener uses his skill set to help nurture the native plants on MDC’s campus with an eye for the future as the campus continues to evolve.
Born in the St. Louis area, Morgan’s family moved to Titusville when he was 10. He graduated from Titusville High School, earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees at the University of Central Florida and his doctorate degree at the University of Florida. Get to know Mark in his conversation with MDC staff writer Lisa D. Mickey:
Q: What did you study in college? A: I graduated in 1976 from the University of Central Florida, which was Florida Technical University at the time, with a major in science education. I taught high school science for three years in Seminole County, took a year off and went back to UCF and got my master’s degree in education. I ended up working for a small business college in Orlando teaching computer programming in the early 1980s. I had learned just enough in my master’s program to work on their computer science faculty. I did that for a year and became dean of the college at age 25. Having grown up in Titusville, I wanted to work in the space industry.
Q: Where did that lead? A: I got a job at the Kennedy Space Center as a training engineer and my employer was Grumman Aerospace. I had a contract with them to take care of the launch processing system. When you see everybody sitting there looking at consoles, we took care of all the electronics gear behind those consoles – everything from the monitors, computers and the network behind all of that. One part controls the actual launch sequence, another part checks the astronauts’ conditions, and another part controls the “beanie tower” [the retractable arm and vent hood], propellants and all aspects and all the parts that go into launching a space shuttle. We had 100 engineers and technicians and we had to advance and learn new systems with new people coming in all the time. I coordinated the training.
Q: How long did you do that? A: I did that for five years. I had started my doctorate degree and Grumman agreed to help pay for my doctorate in education at the University of Florida. There was no Internet back then, so there were no online classes. We had videotape and part of my job at that time was to capture staff members’ lessons on videotape that we could use for training in our library. I finished my doctorate degree in higher education administration while still working for Grumman at the space center.
Q: What came next? A: I was living in Orlando and commuting back and forth. I took some time off and took a job in Orlando in the training business. The company I worked for worked with Fortune 500 companies in training executives. I did that for a year, and about that time, Grumman called me to do something different. This was the late 1980s and there was something called Total Quality Management, that stemmed from a Japanese Management program that had mastered process control. American companies were just getting onboard and Grumman went all in on a corporate level in New York and through all of their divisions, including in the space industry. They called me to be the quality manager to help our quality control team implement this new program. So, we moved to Titusville for me to work at the Space Center. I had all three children [Catherine, Annie and Max] by that time and my wife Nancy and I agreed that Titusville was a good place to raise them.
Q: This was during the Space Shuttle Program, right? A: Yes. Annie was born one week after the Challenger blew up. We were dealing with that, but I loved working at Kennedy Space Center and it was a very exciting time. A lot can go wrong in that big system, but our team took great pride in that the launch was never delayed or affected as a result of our work or lack of work. We did something called “Quality Circles” and we would get 6-10 people together with a trained facilitator to explore the headaches with the systems they used and try to fix things. We brought together technicians and engineers to ask what delayed them or kept them from getting a job done. I coordinated that and trained 12 other facilitators who worked across the Space Center workforce. At one point, we had 40 different teams, who would report into our leadership team. My job was to bring in these teams regularly to present. This involved all of the contractors. It could be things like getting parts in a timely fashion or changing a regulation. We would give them the tools to take a problem apart, analyze, figure out a root cause and come up with a solution, implement the solution and then test it to make sure it worked. I did that for five years into the early 1990s. My contractor, Grumman, won the annual NASA Quality Award in 1991. We leveraged that into winning a contract at the Johnson Space Center in Houston.
Q: When did you move to Texas? A: We moved in 1992. All the kids were little. Catherine was 9, Annie was 6 and Max was 5. It was a five-year contract, so we thought, “Let’s go have an adventure.” Our team was responsible for the computer system at Johnson Space Center – keyboards and work terminals. That’s when microcomputers were taking off, so it was only around 1990 when people started getting personal computers in their office. Our job was to make sure that everybody at Johnson Space Center had a computer on their desk and that they were connected to the network. Then this wonderful thing called the Internet came along. Part of our job was to make a presentation to the NASA leadership team and assure them this was a good idea to implement throughout their network.
Q: Doesn’t that seem like a hundred years ago? A: It does, but we had to convince people that the Internet was a good thing. And then email became a part of our routine and communicating and dealing with others electronically, along with all of the challenges that go with it in the workforce. We’re talking about NASA, contractors and astronauts. It was great fun because we lived in a little neighborhood next to Johnson Space Center where most of the astronauts lived with their families.
Q: Did you have friends who were astronauts? A: Yes. All the kids were little and played sports together or were on swim teams within our community. We got to know everybody in the neighborhood. The moms took turns driving kids to school. Annie was in the first or second grade and my wife Nancy’s turn came up to drive Annie and a couple of other little girls. They were heading to school and one girl asked if Nancy could drive next week because her mom was going to be out of town. Nancy said, “Sure, where’s your mom going?” And the little girl said, “In space.” Her mom was Kathy Thornton [now in the U.S. Astronaut Hall of Fame, having orbited the Earth 256 times, traveling more than 6 million miles and logging a total of 15 days in space with five space walks]. It was so interesting just being part of a revolution going on with electronics and the NASA Space Shuttle program.
Q: What happened after that five-year contract ended? A: Grumman wanted to move me to a couple of places where we really didn’t want to go. Nancy said, “I’m going back to Florida. Our family’s there.” She grew up there and we met in high school in Titusville. So, in 1997, I went to work for a guy in California who ran his own training and consulting company and his firm offered exactly what I had been doing at the Space Center to businesses – forming teams, creating processing improvement, teaching people tools with training facilitators. He needed someone on the east coast of the U.S. I did that for another five years, working out of New Smyrna Beach.
Q: Were you traveling a lot? A: Yes, and that was the big rub. At the time when we moved to New Smyrna, one kid was entering high school, one was entering middle school and one was finishing elementary school. I would leave the house on Monday morning and get home at 10 on a Friday night. The travel got old and I was wanting to get off the road. And then came 9-11 and our business instantly dried up. I ended up leaving and doing some of that work on my own in Central Florida, but then I went to work at Seminole State College.
Q: Doing what at Seminole State? A: I was the director of institutional research. Every post-secondary institution has a research office that tracks all non-research indicators that you want to know about an institution – such things as enrollment and graduation rate. There are also requirements from the state of Florida and from the federal government of things you have to track. Every college has that data set that they have to gather and report. Our job was to do that, but also to pick it apart and look at the barriers we found on their path to graduation. While I was there, the state of Florida allowed us to start offering bachelor’s degrees, so over time, I inherited accreditation. I had a team of six analysts who were very innovative about coming up with routines and algorithms. We built the scorecard for the college of things we wanted to keep an eye on over time.
Q: Is that what you did until you retired? A: Yes, I was there for 16 years. I left as associate vice president of the college, retiring in 2021.
Q: You went from some very stimulating work to retirement. How has that gone? A: Wonderful! Actually, it surprised me. There were so many things I liked about working at the college and then the pandemic struck in 2020. We all worked remotely for a year. During that year, I decided I was going to retire in March 2021, so I was kind of on a countdown clock. During the pandemic, I found that my relief was getting up every morning and taking a walk and gardening. At the time, I didn’t have a yard because we had moved into a condominium.
Q: Is that where MDC fit in? A: Yes, I was like, “who has the biggest garden in town? MDC!” Nancy and I had helped update MDC’s strategic plan. I was volunteering at MDC in 2013 when Annie was working at MDC and starting the Shuck & Share program [named by Annie’s mom, Nancy]. I helped make oyster mats and bags and helped with deployments in the lagoon. It was a logical thing to get more involved at MDC because I already knew a lot about it.
Q: You have also volunteered on MDC’s S.W.A.T team – maintaining the campus grounds, right? A: I have done that and then I started helping maintain our native plant gardens. When I retired, the first thing I did was to become certified as a master gardener through the University of Florida’s agricultural extension office.
Q: Is it different tending your own yard versus maintaining the grounds of a place focused on native plants? A: I just like digging in the dirt and having an opportunity to see things grow. To be a part of this and to see what Mother Nature will put in different places in a pretty hostile environment with poor soil for growing plants is a challenge. And I love being part of something bigger than myself. This wonderful team that has come together, the projects they’re working on and the vision looking forward is thrilling to be a part of.
Q: Your team mentality shifted to being a part of MDC’s grounds team. A: I love being part of something big in our community and what I think is a really exceptional team of staff, volunteers, the leadership team and all the families and guests who come together here. I appreciate the passion and enthusiasm they all have about this place. I feel good about being a part of that and contributing to it, growing something that I think is amazing for our community and truly having an impact on the lagoon.
Q: Were you one of the volunteers who came out here when the salt marsh was restored in 2014? A: Yes. It was a moonscape at that time. I’m in awe by what I see has happened out here with the realization that people have a little bit of impact by getting the marsh seeded and started, but then Mother Nature just took over.
Q: Has there been a highlight for you as a volunteer? A: Overall, just what this property has become. I saw it in those early stages when MDC moved into the old high school building. All three of my kids went to high school here, so I knew what was there and then watched that whole process of restoration. The real highlight is looking at all of this and thinking, holy moly, this is phenomenal and there are more big plans ahead.
Q: Your daughter Annie Roddenberry was a young scientist with FWC when the marsh was being restored and she got to learn from that experience. Most recently, she oversaw the restoration of MDC’s western shoreline. As a parent, what does that mean to you? A: She helped get the new shoreline funded, permitted and coordinated with all the people who were involved. Annie had such a key role in all of that and it was great being part of her support team and watching them pull it all off.
Q: You did a lot of different things in your career. What stands out? A: My team winning the NASA Quality Award in 1991 was big. And I loved working at Seminole State. Nancy worked at Daytona State, so we could compare notes. She had an almost identical job there, handling accreditation and institution research work, earning her doctorate degree while she was there. I enjoyed leading a re-accreditation effort, which is required every 10 years. You have to report on every aspect of your institution – your students, your faculty, your faculty qualifications, leadership team qualifications, things you’re working on, evidence of improvement and proof that you’re in good standing with every federal and state agency you work with. There were a lot of boxes to check to bring all of that together. I led that effort, which was very satisfying. Two years before I retired, I won the college’s 2019 Pathfinder Award for individual contributions to the college, which was a highlight,
Q: Does your skill set translate in any way here at MDC, digging in the dirt? A: It’s certainly a lot less stressful than going through accreditation or presenting to the board of trustees! This is a happy place. I knew I wanted to be either in, on or around the lagoon every day – just being outdoors after I retired. This gives me that opportunity. In all of my different jobs, I enjoyed seeing a challenge, bringing together a plan to address that challenge and then working on the plan. Out here, it’s an ongoing project every day. There’s always something to figure out, implement and test out to see what happens.
Q: Why is volunteering important? A: It gets me out of the house every day in a beautiful place. People who don’t enjoy retirement just haven’t found what they enjoy doing yet. Go find that and get involved! I think it’s important to give back to the community. It’s a marvelous community of people who have gathered around this effort and I’m always amazed at how many other agencies are involved in this whole place doing some pretty fantastic things.
Q: Do you ever see any local creatures while you work? A: It happens all the time. There are marsh rabbits, clapper rails and great horned owls. Manatees and dolphins have popped up. Osprey and bald eagles fly by and there are egrets and herons. I’ve even seen a painted bunting.
Q: Is there something you have learned here that has resonated with you? A: It’s the power of Mother Nature to fill a space, whether that’s good or bad. You can kind of control your small garden space at home and nurture it, but out here at MDC, it’s different. If you miss a week or so of weeding, you realize Mother Nature just added something while you were gone. As part of my Master Gardener training, I realized over time it’s about seeing what nature is going to do in a space for you and not fighting it. You have to recognize what will grow there, learn more about native plants and their contribution, and just go with the flow.
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