NASA announced senior management changes today involving three agency field centers.

William (Bill) Parsons, director of the agency’s Stennis Space Center, Miss., has accepted the position of deputy center director at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Fla. Parsons became Stennis director in Sept. 2005. He joined NASA in 1990 after leaving the Marine Corps. He has served in several senior leadership positions within the human space flight program. After the Columbia tragedy, Parsons was selected to direct NASA’s return to flight efforts as space shuttle program manager, and he directed last summer’s successful flight of Discovery during STS-114. He led NASA’s recovery efforts after Hurricane Katrina. He has a bachelor’s in engineering from the University of Mississippi, Oxford, Miss., and a master’s degree in engineering from the University of Central Florida, Orlando.

Richard Gilbrech will take over as Stennis director. He has served as deputy director of the agency’s Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., and deputy director of NASA’s Engineering Safety Center. He started his career at Stennis in 1991, and has worked at the agency’s Johnson Space Flight Center’s White Sands Facility, N.M., Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala., and Glenn Research Center, Cleveland. He earned a bachelor’s in aerospace engineering from Mississippi State University, Starkville, Miss.; master’s and doctoral degrees from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena.

G. Scott Hubbard, center director at NASA’s Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif., has accepted a position at the SETI Institute, Mountain View, Calif. He assumes the Carl Sagan Chair for the Study of Life in the Universe on Feb. 15. He began his career at Ames in 1987 and has served as center director since 2002. He served on the Columbia Accident Investigation Board, helping to determine the cause for the loss of the shuttle Columbia. He also served as the first director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute. Marv Christensen has been named acting Ames director.

For more information about NASA and agency programs on the Web, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/home