January 29, 2015
Student Highlight - Hunter Rudd
Hunter Rudd likes to think big – and since he first started taking classes online at ECU in 2008, he has achieved victory on many fronts. He is set to graduate this spring with honors and most recently earned the Ward/Thompson Scholarship for 2014-15. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
A full-time student, Rudd lives in Chapel Hill where he owns a photography business called Rudd Photography LLC . He specializes in high quality corporate imaging and has dozens of commercial and private customers.
What’s even more notable, Rudd is a Special Forces veteran. He enlisted in the U.S. Army after 9/11, dropping out of Lehigh University in Pennsylvania to become a Green Beret and serve for 10 years in the Middle East. He earned three Bronze Stars, two Meritorious Service Medals, and one Purple Heart during his service. He still teaches at Ft. Bragg.
He met his wife, an Air Force Intelligence Analyst, when they were both deployed in Afghanistan. In 2011, the couple decided it was time for a change. They left the military and pursued academics full-time.
“I wanted an institution that would work with me while I was in the service, to achieve my dream of bettering my understanding behind the art and science of management,” Rudd explained. “ECU fit that bill perfectly. Having a brick and mortar campus, along with a reputation for academic and athletic excellence, it stood out from the crowd of universities that were offering online education to service-members.”
Rudd’s wife is a currently a senior at UNC-Chapel Hill, dual-majoring in Political Science and European Studies. She hopes to pursue her graduate degree next year, just like Rudd plans to earn his MBA.
In addition to juggling his full-time studies and work, Rudd actively participates in veterans groups such as the VFW and the American Legion. He’s currently the senior strategic planner for UNC’s newly formed student veterans group, the Carolina Veterans Organization. Rudd said that even though he is an ECU student, the veterans community at UNC has welcomed him wholeheartedly, surmounting any college rivalry.
This past fall, as part of MGMT 4343 (a senior-level elective course that provides a deep and applied exploration of leadership), Rudd and other ECU business students had to complete a hands-on leadership project – giving them the opportunity to lead others and make a difference. For his project, Rudd surpassed even his own expectations. He led a team of volunteers through the Carolina Veterans Organization to raise more than 4,500 pounds of food for the Food Bank of Central and Eastern NC and TABLE, a non-profit that provides healthy, emergency food aid every week to hungry children living in Chapel Hill and Carrboro, N.C. The project was close to his heart, having lived through war and seen the devastation wrought by nutrition deficiency.
In all, Rudd’s student-veteran team spent more than 202 man-hours reaching out to local business and manning Fill-the-Truck events at community grocers. They started with the goal to deliver 1,000 pounds of food the week of Thanksgiving, but they quickly surpassed it and made an even larger impact within the community.
Rudd said, “In my leadership within the military, you don’t readily realize how easy leadership is in such a hierarchical and compulsory environment. Through Dr. Grubb’s MGMT 4343 course, I was forced to step outside of my comfort zone and lead in a volunteer project. That presented a number of challenges for me, but in the end I was successful in not only raising more than 4,500 lbs of food donations, but I also learned a great deal about the art and science of leadership in the civilian world.”
Rudd says that he has been humbled by the academic rigor of ECU’s College of Business experience, and he believes that with his education, he can truly change the world.
“The ECU College of Business is one of the most interconnected schools that I’ve seen,” Rudd said. “Aside from our career services, the rich network afforded by our distance education programs for both undergraduate and graduate business studies gives our students and alumni incredible reach within virtually every industry. In addition, our professors possess some incredibly relevant knowledge on not just the theory of business administration, but also the application. It is through educating our students on the application, not just the theory, that ECU finds its most critical value proposition for those businesses wise enough to recruit from our graduates.”