Rear Admiral Douglas Hunter Teeson is the thirty-sixth Superintendent of the United States Coast Guard Academy after serving the previous three years as Commander, Maintenance and Logistics Command, Atlantic area. He was promoted to Flag rank in 1994, while serving as Chief of Staff to the Commander, U.S. Coast Guard Atlantic Area and as Commander, Maritime Defense Zone Atlantic.
A Vermonter, he is a 1965 graduate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy. He holds Master of Science degrees in Ocean Engineering from the University of Rhode Island, and in Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Sloan School. His sea duty ranged into Pacific, Arctic, Atlantic, Mediterranean, and Caribbean waters on the cutters W ACHUSETI, NORTHWIND, and HAMILTON. Early staff tours included ocean, civil and naval engineering work involving pollution prevention and response, lighthouse automation, and vessel support.
After completing the 1982-1983 Sloan Fellow program at MIT, he headed the Engineering Schools, and later the Training Division, at the Coast Guard's major Training Center in Yorktown, Virginia. Headquarters assignments in 1986-1989 involved planning, programming and budgeting for the Coast Guard's military workforce; studies of the programming and budgeting for the Coast Guard's military workforce; studies of the organizational design and development of Coast Guard headquarters; and program management of Coast Guard training and education. In 1989, he returned to the Yorktown Training Center as Commanding Officer.
From 1991-93, he served as Deputy Chief, Office of Acquisition, during an unprecedented string of successful major acquisitions of vessels, aircraft, and technology for the twenty-first century. In 1994-95, he led a groundbreaking study of training and education, which supported subsequent decisions by the Commandant to create the Leadership Development Center at the Coast Guard Academy.
Rear Admiral Teeson is married to the former Phyllis Jean E., also from Vermont. The Teesons have two sons: David and John.