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The Victoria College. Full-time salaried position with benefits available...
DISTRICT "Champions for Community Wellness" has the following positions...
Last time he was in Cartagena, Colombia, Tim Hudson was a student, fresh from earning his undergraduate degree in history.
He and some college friends decided to better their Spanish by immersing themselves in it. With the clothes on their back and few dollars in their pockets, they traversed the countryside, town to town to learn the language first hand.
Hudson revisited the town and the region again recently, and was surprised by how different it looked.
“My goodness, it has grown like crazy,” he said. “It has a lot of resort-type of structures, high-rise condos, hotels. None of that was there before. It was a laid-back, bohemian coastal type of town with a lot of history.”
His visit this time was as president of the University of Houston-Victoria, as one of 45 influential citizens and with the United State Military’s Joint Civilian Orientation Conference.
The annual program, in its 75th year, is the longest standing outreach program by the U.S. military to influence civilians about how the military operates and to build support and advocacy for the military, Hudson said.
“I think any of us that run large institutions are always happy to show people who are not in our institutions, how we work, how we operate, what we do, how we handle issues,” he said. “And I think the more transparency, the better.”
Hudson and the other 44 participants were selected from a pool of 800 nominations.
Nominations can come from senators, high-ranking military officer or a former participant. Hudson was nominated by Cynthia Thomas, president of the Dallas-based Tri-Dimension Strategies consulting firm. Thomas heard a Hudson speech on U.S./Cuba trade relations and maintained contact with him.
Each year the group visits a different part of the world, Hudson said. The military has divided itself into geographic commands, Pacific Command, Southern Command, etc., and this year the participants visited Southern Command.
The two biggest challenges are the relationships between governments and the drug runners and terrorism and security, Hudson learned.
“So we took a long look at how we deal with this problem. Who’s doing the work, the relationship among the services, how they work together, how they handle problems. how they handle intelligence, where they get intelligence from, etc.”
The struggle is in getting people’s attention in a time when there is a war going on in another part of the world, he said.
“My conversations with people in the various places I went led me to believe they suffer from a lack of attention or understanding from the general public, which is rightly engrossed in every day what’s going on in Afghanistan or Iraq.”
Hudson and the other participants were given briefings, got a chance to have hands-on ordinance operations, ride in various military transports, visit on aircraft carriers and eat meals with enlisted soldiers.
“All kinds of experiences to let you know what is happening with our military in this particular theater.”
The group traveled more than 13,000 miles in a seven-day period, Hudson said. While he is used to traveling often, Hudson admitted that the travel wore him down.
Other stops included Cuba and visiting the base at Guantanamo Bay, Rio de Janeiro, Colombia to Honduras and finishing in Key West where the U.S. has extensive Coast Guard and narcotics interdiction operations.
Hudson came away from the trip with a higher regard for the role played by the everyday soldier in this theater.
“It’s always an honor to meet high-ranking military officers who spent a whole career doing this,” he said. “It was really inspiring to spend time with our young men and women who serve us so well in these places. These are really wonderful stories and wonderful young people.”
Bj Lewis is a reporter for the Advocate. Contact him at 361-580-6535 or bjlewis@vicad.com.