Rear Admiral Richard Houck :::
Rear Admiral Richard Houck
Graduated in 1971
Inducted in 2003
A 1971 graduate, Richard Houck is one of only 30 officers at the rank of Rear Admiral in the
U.S. Coast Guard. He serves as Assistant Commandant for Planning, Resources and Procurement,
building, defending and executing a $7 billion budget to support all Coast Guard missions: Homeland
Security, Search and Rescue, Drug and Illegal Migrant Interdiction, Marine Safety, Defense
Operations, Marine Environmental Protection and Aids to Navigation. Prior to his current post, he
was Executive Director of the Coast Guard’s Transition Team, moving the Coast Guard from the
Department of Transportation to the Department of Homeland Security. He served on ships in both the
Atlantic and Pacific theaters including the Bering Sea, Caribbean, Hawaii and Micronesia. Houck is
a graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy and holds a bachelor’s degree in Nuclear Engineering and
Naval Architecture/Marine Engineering. He also earned master’s degrees in Mechanical Engineering
from the Naval Postgraduate School and in Business Administration from Pepperdine University and is
a distinguished graduate of the Naval War College. He has received numerous military awards,
including the Legion of Merit, three Meritorious Service Medals, four Commendation Medals, and two
Achievement Medals. Whether he was coordinating major vessel construction, renovation and repair
projects, displaying exceptional resourcefulness to achieve budget savings as a Program Reviewer,
publishing a paper on leadership in professional periodicals as the first Coast Guard Fellow at the
Center for Naval Analyses, or coordinating ground-breaking joint exercises between military,
federal, state and local law enforcement forces following September 11th as the Coast Guard Chief
of Staff in Alaska, Houck’s Coast Guard career is exemplary.