{"id":8763,"date":"2017-03-28T17:09:21","date_gmt":"2017-03-28T22:09:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thechicagoschool.edu\/"},"modified":"2021-03-04T13:02:58","modified_gmt":"2021-03-04T19:02:58","slug":"guardian-of-the-skies-tracy-dillinger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thechicagoschool.edu\/insight\/community\/guardian-of-the-skies-tracy-dillinger\/","title":{"rendered":"Guardian of the skies"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are always those moments, those flickers of stardust\u2014people and places and events that determine who we are and what we will become. But when alumna Tracy G. Dillinger, Psy.D., sifts through the memories of what shaped her studies at The Chicago School of Professional Psychology in the late 1980s and led to a career as a prominent NASA investigator, it comes back to one singular tragedy.<\/p>\n

She was finishing up an M.A. in Counseling Psychology at the University of Iowa with her eyes on The Chicago School\u2019s Clinical Psychology program. The daughter of psychologists, Dr. Dillinger knew if she wanted to get a Psy.D., she\u2019d want to be taught by practicing clinicians with real-world experience.<\/p>\n

Her plan was set. And then, on her birthday, a week before her master\u2019s comprehensive exam, she turned on the local news.<\/p>\n

There had been a plane crash in Iowa and the pilot was someone very close to Dr. Dillinger\u2014a long-time friend and mentor who she knew was suffering from depression and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) from his time serving in Vietnam.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe committed suicide by flying his airplane into the ground,\u201d she says. \u201cHe didn\u2019t take any passengers with him, but he could have. I think that moment is what led to me wanting to use the skills I was developing to try to prevent things like this from happening.\u201d<\/p>\n

So in 1986, Dr. Dillinger moved to Chicago and started at TCSPP with a special focus on military psychology. She was there just after the campus moved from Michigan Avenue to the historic Dearborn Station. Everything was new and while The Chicago School only offered the Clinical Psy.D. program at that time, she knew this institution was pioneering a new way of teaching psychology.<\/p>\n

\u201cI came right after they moved from the Fine Arts Building where I heard from students they could hear the Chicago Symphony Orchestra practicing. It was a very optimistic time,\u201d says Dr. Dillinger, who was a keynote speaker at a recent event at The Chicago School\u2019s D.C. Campus. \u201cAll of the students were extremely motivated. People were really interested in helping each other and it was a lot of fun.\u201d<\/p>\n

Through her studies and connections, Dr. Dillinger began a psychology internship with the U.S. Air Force. Her pilot friend\u2019s suicide fresh in her mind, this is exactly where she wanted to be.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew I wanted to work with pilots to make sure they were getting good mental health services. I was also interested in that and how you maintain really high levels of performance during stressful times,\u201d explains Dr. Dillinger, adding: \u201cThe Chicago School laid a great foundation professionally. I had a solid academic and experiential background so by the time I went to that internship, I was ready. I was as prepared as you can possibly be to enter a clinical setting.\u201d<\/p>\n

The internship went so well she decided to stay on as an officer in the Air Force, set on cultivating an expertise in conducting the \u201chuman factor\u201d part of military investigations. If a plane went down, she\u2019d examine any potential stress, fatigue, or mental health conditions affecting the people both on board and in flight control on ground.<\/p>\n

That expertise launched a new path forward starting in 1993 with USAF aircraft mishap investigations. Six years later, she received an invitation in 1999 to serve on the prestigious Space Shuttle Independent Assessment Team (SSIAT) for NASA\u2019s planned launch of the Columbia Space Shuttle.<\/p>\n

To this day she remembers the moment where she had to stand up to high-ranking NASA officials to say that the Shuttle was not ready for liftoff. Too many engineers had voiced concern to the SSIAT team and she didn\u2019t feel comfortable giving the green light.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was very vocal that this group of people who worked on this complicated piece of machinery were not ready,\u201d she says. \u201cI insisted they delay the launch and had information from people we interviewed to back me up. If you talk to engineers and they are so actively worrying about technical aspects that they\u2019re in the bathroom throwing up all launch, then as a clinician you share those concerns with leadership.\u201d<\/p>\n

Over three years later\u2014when the shuttle Columbia did launch\u2014Dr. Dillinger had taken a sabbatical from the Air Force to pursue a one-year Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Aviation Psychology at the University of Illinois.<\/p>\n

So that\u2019s where she was on that fateful February morning in 2003\u2014a morning eerily similar to the one all those years before in Iowa. Dr. Dillinger was driving to meet up with family and friends in Decatur, Ill. when the news broke on her car radio.<\/p>\n

The Columbia Space Shuttle had gone missing. The signal had disappeared and NASA officials suspected they lost the whole orbiter.<\/p>\n

\u201cI pulled over and was pretty upset because I knew \u2026 I knew,\u201d <\/em>she says, adding that in the investigation community, what would happen next was obvious. \u201cI called the General to say, \u2018I\u2019ve heard,\u2019 and we both knew what that meant. He responded, \u2018Are your bags packed?\u2019 In this kind of international investigative work, your bags are always packed in case of an emergency. So I turned the car around, got my bags, and flew out to Houston. We worked the travel orders out later.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dr. Dillinger, then still active duty with the USAF\u2014Lt. Col. Dillinger\u2014joined the Columbia Accident Investigation Board (CAIB) to determine the organizational factors that might \u00a0have influenced the mishap, working with high-level officials from a variety of government entities. The final report is in several volumes looking at technical and organizational areas, however Volume 1, Chapter 7, addresses the organizational aspects specifically.<\/p>\n

\u201cWith the Columbia, we knew it wasn\u2019t the actions of the crew, who were casualties in the mishap, that were critical to the accident. Determining the \u00a0decision-making and actions of people on ground\u2014beforehand was where the \u2018latent\u2019 embedded risks existed,\u201d she says explaining that she conducted months of daily interviews for the CAIB. \u201cYou\u2019ve got to talk to all the people and understand why they did what they did.\u201d<\/p>\n

Today, after serving 21 years in the Air Force, \u00a0retired as a Lt. Col. in 2010, and hired by NASA that same year, Dr. Dillinger leads two critical NASA safety programs; safety culture and human factors.<\/p>\n

Her expertise continues to secure the safety and mental health of men and women whose mission takes them to the skies\u2014and sometimes into outer space.<\/p>\n

She is a proud mother, grandmother, and recently, great-grandmother, and says she has seen and experienced more in her career than she ever could have imagined back at The Chicago School.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy intention was not to end up where I am,\u201d says Dr. Dillinger. \u201cI was more driven by personal interactions\u2014pure clinical work at first. But over time one thing led to another. To stop a fatigued pilot from making a fatal mistake, you need to influence the fatigue policy, and when that\u2019s not enforced, you need to address those failures with leadership and headquarters. My whole career has been about observing behavioral science in real-life settings, not just clinical. And I have had many opportunities to make a difference.\u201d<\/p>\n

She wouldn\u2019t trade the journey she has taken for anything, and says she remains grateful for the influence The Chicago School had on helping her find her professional mission.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Chicago School gave me everything I needed to be where I am today,\u201d Dr. Dillinger says. \u201cI am proud to see how the school has grown. The sky\u2019s the limit for this next generation of practitioners. My advice to them is to follow their passions and don\u2019t let anything hold you back from doing what you know is right.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Learn more about The Chicago School of Professional Psychology<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Chicago School offers a range of academic programs that can prepare you to positively impact mental health. Fill out the information below to request more information, or you can apply today through our application portal.<\/a><\/p>\n<\/section>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dr. Tracy Dillinger, the aeronautic safety expert who helped investigate the Columbia Space Shuttle crash, never imagined how life would turn out when she applied to The Chicago School of Professional Psychology in 1986. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":107218,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[191],"tags":[],"coauthors":[1064],"class_list":["post-8763","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-community"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nGuardian of the Skies: Dr. Dillinger, Aeronautical Safety Expert | TCSPP<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Dr. Tracy Dillinger, who helped investigate the Columbia Space Shuttle crash, never imagined how life would turn out when she applied to TCSPP in 1986.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, 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