Groton - Few would have pegged first-grader Stephen Bowen as a future astronaut. For Bowen, assigned to the grade's "lowest reading group," space flight might have seemed too lofty a goal.

Even as a sixth-grader at Deer Hill School in Cohasset, Mass., Bowen had no inkling he'd ever walk in space. He did, however, make a prescient suggestion when the U.S. Postal Service was looking for ideas for new stamps: he nominated the Apollo-Soyuz project, the first U.S.-Soviet space partnership.

"Space was in the news back then," Bowen said Thursday, addressing eastern Connecticut high school students at Robert E. Fitch High School. "It was part of your daily life."

Bowen overcame whatever early academic deficiencies he might have exhibited and went on to earn a degree in electrical engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy and a degree in ocean engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After serving in the submarine force for 14 years, he became the first submarine officer chosen for NASA's astronaut corps.

Now 47 and a veteran of three space shuttle missions to the International Space Station, including Discovery's final flight earlier this year, Navy Capt. Stephen G. Bowen spoke with authority about the importance of buckling down in class.

He figured out, he said, that when things came hard to him, it meant they were worth learning.

"Anybody out there have a class they don't like?" he asked.

Many in the auditorium full of students from a dozen high schools indicated they do.

"If you study hard and do well, you will have choices," Bowen said. "I got to choose the Academy. I got to choose the submarine force."

And when he expressed an interest in the astronaut corps, it chose him. And it chooses less than 1 percent of those who apply, Bowen said.

Bowen's appearance, sponsored by the Eastern Connecticut Workforce Investment Board, the Naval Submarine Medical Research Laboratory and the EASTCONN Educational Service Center, was aimed at promoting high school students' interest in science, technology, engineering and math.

The shortage of engineers, technicians and scientists of all stripes is an issue worldwide, not just in the United States, Bowen told the students. In the space shuttle program, thousands of people with technical skills work behind the scenes, he said.

Responding to students' questions, Bowen said the average age of those chosen for the astronaut corps is 33 or 34 and that the average age of the current crop is 47. Typically, those who enter the corps face two years of study before being assigned to a mission. Training for a mission can take another 2½ years.

Bowen showed videos compiled from his second and third shuttle flights - a 2010 mission aboard Atlantis that was followed by the very next shuttle flight, this year's Discovery finale.

Crew members' weightlessness antics - he later referred to them as "stupid astronaut tricks" - drew especially favorable responses from the audience.

Bowen's first shuttle mission was aboard Endeavour in 2008. All told, he has logged more than 40 days in space, including more than 47 hours of "extra vehicular activity" during seven spacewalks.

In the spirit of things high tech, Fitch's robotics club, the Aluminum Falcons, gave Bowen a plaque that was presented to him by the club's award-winning robot, "Talyn."

b.hallenbeck@theday.com