Texas Border Business
MCALLEN, Texas — The Texas A&M University Higher Education Center at McAllen (HECM) invites the community to attend its first Distinguished Speaker Series on Monday, Dec. 8, 2025, from 6 to 8 p.m. The event will launch with a special presentation from Debbie Korth, the Orion deputy program manager at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
To further the HECM’s mission of enriching students’ educational experiences, the Distinguished Speaker Series was established as a dynamic forum for learning and inspiration. Through this series, leaders and innovators from a wide range of industries are invited to share the stories behind the evolution of their professional careers and the groundbreaking projects they are pursuing.
By offering firsthand insights into the challenges, trends and opportunities shaping their fields, these speakers provide students with valuable knowledge and perspectives that can support and elevate their own educational and career aspirations.
As the first speaker of the HECM’s Distinguished Speaker Series, Korth’s presentation, “From McAllen to the Moon: Building NASA’s Orion Spacecraft,” will detail her journey from McAllen to Texas A&M University and eventually to NASA. She will discuss her role working on the Orion spacecraft, which will fly astronauts around the moon on Artemis II — NASA’s first crewed mission of the Artemis campaign to return humans to lunar exploration.
“The goal of the Distinguished Speaker Series is to bring visionary industry leaders to our center to inspire students — we are inviting individuals who can ignite curiosity, share transformative experiences and open doors to new possibilities,” said Ernie Aliseda ’88, associate vice president and chief operating officer of the Texas A&M University Higher Education Center at McAllen. “We are proud to launch this series with an extraordinary presentation from NASA’s Debbie Korth. Her journey — from being raised here in McAllen to becoming a proud Aggie and a leader of NASA’s Orion Program — reminds our students that no dream is out of reach.”
The Distinguished Speaker Series will be held at the Texas A&M University Higher Education Center at McAllen’s auditorium at 6200 Tres Lagos Blvd.
To learn more about the HECM’s Distinguished Speaker Series, visit https://tx.ag/DistinguishedSpeakerSeries.
Information source: Texas A&M University Higher Education Center at McAllen
