Colonel Bryan Watson (BA Geography, ’93) will be on campus to receive the College of Arts and Science 2020 Distinguished Alumni Award. He will be meeting with geography students, staff and faculty, before his awards presentation Feb. 21 at Reynolds Alumni Center.

This distinguished award recognizes individuals who have brought distinction to themselves and A&S through their accomplishments.

Bryan Watson is a colonel in the U.S. Air Force, and currently serves as the Air Force’s chief trial judge. He presides over federal military trials while leading the Air Force’s 26 trial judges across five judicial circuits around the world.  

His military service includes multiple assignments as the senior attorney at large federal installations both inside the United States and overseas, the general counsel of the White House Military Office, and, most recently, the commandant (dean) of the U.S. Air Force Judge Advocate General’s School.  

He was nominated by William E Boston III, MU’s former chair of the Department of Aerospace Studies. In part, Boston writes: “Bryan’s strengths include a degree of integrity sorely needed in government today. His three years in the White House exemplified this in his handling of daily challenges involving all aspects of the Department of Defense support to executive branch officials up to and including two presidents.”

The nomination was supported by Geography Chair Soren Larsen who states, while he was not in the department at the same time as Watson, geography professors “all unequivocally speak very highly of him.”

Watson also had recommendations from others on campus, including Lael Keiser, interim chair of the Department of Political Science; Robert C Bailey, assistant dean emeritus of the Center for Study of Dispute Resolution at the Law School; Christopher “Kit” Salter, professor and chair, emeritus, with MU geography, among others.

Watson’s professional experience, besides his current profession of chief trial judge for the U.S. Air Force in Washington D.C., includes

• Commandant (dean) and university law chair at the Judge Advocate General’s School in Montgomery, Alabama
• General counsel, White House Military Office, The White House, Washington, D.C.
• Distinguished graduate, Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy, National Defense University, Washington, D.C.
• General counsel (staff judge advocate), Aviano Air Base, Italy
• General counsel (staff judge advocate), Bolling Air Force Base, Washington, D.C.
• Chief of communications and media relations, Office of the Judge Advocate General the Pentagon, Washington, D.C,
• Federal military judge, Randolph Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas

Larsen adds, as chair of the Department of Geography, that part of the department’s role is to “instill in our students some of the more noble traditions of the discipline.

“As a field driven to explore the world around us, we encourage intellectual curiosity to observe things they may not expect and to be open to new experiences, peoples, and cultures.”

Larsen writes geography combines elements of the humanities, social sciences, and STEM, and that the department encourages students to be creative/flexible. Larsen adds much of the coursework is on “experiential learning, fieldwork and the benefits of [metaphorically and literally] getting your hands dirty.”

While he says it is unclear the exact impact this has on students, he says the faculty who worked with Watson says, collectively, that he has “clearly continued to build off those experiences throughout his professional life.

“In short, we are proud to be associated in some small way with the formation of the person Mr. Watson has become. Even though he does not have a position entitled geographer, he has distinguished himself in pursuing the ideals grounding geography."

Bryan is a graduate of the University of Missouri, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree (magna cum laude, with honors, Phi Beta Kappa) in 1993 and a Juris Doctor degree in 1996. He is a graduate of the University of Missouri’s Air Force ROTC program (Distinguished Graduate, 1993), and he holds a Master of Arts degree from the U.S. Air Force’s Air Command and Staff College (Distinguished Graduate, 2006), and a Master of Science degree from the National Defense University’s Dwight D. Eisenhower School for National Security and Resource Strategy (Distinguished Graduate, 2014).  His wife, Deb, is a 1994 graduate of the University of Missouri’s School of Nursing. They have two children, Andrew (a junior at Virginia Tech) and Sara (a junior in high school), and they live near Washington, D.C.