COL (Ret.) Sharon R.
Hamilton, USA, Ph.D.
COL (Ret.) Sharon R. Hamilton, USA, Ph.D.
Vice President of Strategic Partnerships
Norwich University
Dr. Sharon R. Hamilton serves as the Norwich University Vice President of Strategic Partnerships. Dr. Hamilton is a retired U.S. Army Colonel with 27 years of active-duty service as a Military Intelligence officer, specializing in signals, tactical, strategic, and socio-cultural intelligence. She led and commanded Army and Joint military and civilian organizations from 5-700 people. During her final two years in the Army, Sharon served as the Director of the Army's Human Terrain System, and was responsible for recruiting, training, deploying, and directing 31 socio-cultural intelligence civilian and
military teams supporting U.S. and Allied units throughout Iraq and Afghanistan.
After retirement from the Army in September 2012, Sharon worked in the defense industry for Cubic Defense as a Program Manager and Deputy Program Director. In 2016, Dr. Hamilton served as the Deputy Director of the William R. Harvey Leadership Institute at Hampton University. From 2017-2020, she worked at the University of North Georgia (a Senior Military College) as the Federal Liaison and Director, Military Programs. In 2018, while at UNG, she initiated the Senior Military College cyber consortium (SMC3) and led the successful efforts for FY 2019 NDAA language and FY 2020 Appropriations that created and funded the DoD Senior Military College Cyber Institutes pilot program.
Since July 2020, Dr. Hamilton has served at Norwich University (a Senior Military College) as the Vice-President of Strategic Partnerships. In this position, she advises the University President and Provost on university, military, government, and industry partnerships and matters of intelligence, electronic warfare, and cyber. Sharon is responsible for collaborating, developing, and initiating Department of Defense (DoD) and Federal grants and programs. She leads the DoD Senior Military College (SMC) Cyber Institute pilot program (2020-present) and led the NSA NCAE-Cyber Evidencing Competency grant (2020-2023) and the NSA NCAE-Cyber Careers Preparation National Center (2022-2024) and coordinated the 2025 Department of Energy Norwich Cyber Informed Engineering grant.
The DoD SMC Cyber Institute program goal is to build an experiential pathway for diverse civilian and military graduates to DoD cyber careers. Norwich University is the lead institution for the DOD SMC Cyber Institute grants. Sharon serves as the Executive Program Director for the six SMC DoD Cyber Institutes. This unique collegiate cyber leader development program (CLDP) serves as a model for developing diverse applicant pipelines to support the 21st century DoD and Federal workforce.
Sharon earned her B.S. in Geology from the University of Wisconsin-Platteville. While in the Army, she earned a Master of Administration from Central Michigan University and a Master of Strategic Studies from the U.S. Army War College. In 2016, she earned a Ph.D. in Management with a specialization in
Leadership and Organizational Change from Walden University.
Dr. Hamilton’s son, Jay, serves on active duty as an Army Military Intelligence Captain.
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