Scott Hudson ’99

Unless they’ve lived it, most of our community doesn’t understand or conceptualize how difficult making a career of service in the armed forces is. For Raider alum Scott Hudson ’99, it’s an easy thing to understand because he’s lived it for 25 years. Scott graduated from Ashland High School in 1992 then joined the US Army shortly thereafter. He trained in air defense artillery and soon was stationed with the 25th Infantry Division in Hawaii and was also deployed to Haiti.

After serving nearly three years of active duty in the Army, he chose to return to Ashland and Southern Oregon State College (SOSC) to put his Montgomery GI Bill benefits to good use. Initially taking math and science courses to go the pre-med route, he eventually changed his major to music. “My father was a music teacher in the Medford School District and I grew up playing music throughout my time in the Ashland School District starting at Helman Elementary School, taking violin lessons after school, so it made sense to go that route,” said Scott. “I had low SAT scores and GPA in high school so when I got into SOSC, starting out on  academic probation,  I found a caring environment with small classes, that allowed me to blossom academically,” he added.

Though he was a non-traditional student, Hudson dove in to campus life, playing in the Raider Band at football and basketball games and participating on the ski team up and down the mountain ranges of the Pacific Coast states. “To give an outsider an indication about how professors were on campus, I had a poor grade in my chemistry course my freshman year and  Dr. Thomas Keevil literally took two hours to guide me through the math the night before the term final. I improved my grade to a “B” because he went out of his way to help me,” said Scott.

Scott graduated from SOU June of 1999 with his bachelor of arts in music. He stayed on an additional year to earn his education certification then taught at Rogue River High School for three years. During his first-year teaching, the terrorist attack on September 11th, sharpened his resolve to serve again and he pursued the US Navy to become a Naval Flight Officer. He earned his ensign commission at Pensacola, Florida in January 2004 and then his aviation wings of gold at Randolph Air Force Base in San Antonio continuing to Naval Air Station (NAS) Jacksonville for advanced training at Patrol Squadron 30 and qualification in the four engine P-3C Orion.

At his first fleet squadron, Patrol Squadron 8 stationed at Brunswick Naval Air Station, Maine, he flew anti-submarine patrols over the Atlantic Ocean along with two deployments to the Middle East from 2006-2009. His service at Brunswick NAS would start a long career of deployments to Iraq, Qatar, Japan, Italy and Djibouti and duty stations spanning from Washington state to Maine, Washington, D.C. to Florida, and Yokosuka Japan. In 2013, he and his family moved to Bremerton, Washington, the home port of the USS John C. Stennis (CVN-74), a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier with the US Pacific Fleet. There, he served in the high stress and dynamic environment as “shooter,” a nickname for the flight deck’s Catapult and Arresting Gear Officer for hundreds of flights over a two-year tour. In 2015, he moved back to NAS Jacksonville to serve in VP-45 as a Department Head in the Tactics, Training, Operations, and Maintenance Departments flying the P-8A Poseidon.

From 2006-2017, he had four deployments. His shore duty assignments include duty as an instructor at Patrol Squadron 30 where he was a member of the P-8A Fleet Introduction Team tasked with designing a transition syllabus and then instructing students and fleet squadrons transitioning to the new aircraft from 2009-2012. He has worked as the Deputy Command Information Officer for the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. (2017-2020) and as the Director, Commander’s Action Group for Commander, U.S. Seventh Fleet in Yokosuka, Japan (2020-2022). Additionally, he earned an MBA through the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA, March of 2020. Recently, Scott moved his family to the country outside of the city of West Lafayette, Indiana, to serve as the Executive Officer of the Purdue University Naval Reserve Officer Training Corps (NROTC) where he helps to lead and train 100+ midshipmen.

“I owe so much to my wife Naida and our five kids for their patience during our ten-plus moves, multiple detachments and deployments, and at times, leaving them to move into new houses and rebuild their lives alone. I’m fortunate in that I have been able to have some incredible adventures along the way, circumnavigating the globe twice, it is nice to settle down in a region we hope to call home for a long time. I credit my wife for keeping everything together (family, finances, schooling) during all those years of moving,” said Scott.

“SOU allowed me as a below average high school student to take the discipline I learned in the Army and apply that to my scholastic endeavors and succeed with the help of some great professors like Stu Turner and Thomas Keevil. The small class sizes at SOU provide an opportunity for personalized instruction while shoring up those cracks that can swallow students in larger institutions.”

Learn more: Purdue University Naval ROTC