LTC Joseph Kopser

Joseph Kopser
Lieutenant Colonel
United States Army

Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Kopser serves as the Chair and Professor of Military Science at The University of Texas at Austin.  He has served in the Army for over 18 years since graduating from West Point in 1993.  There he earned a Bachelor of Science in Aerospace Engineering.   LTC Kopser also holds a Masters in Public Administration from the Harvard Kennedy School.   In addition, he is a Next Generation Project Texas Fellow at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at UT-Austin with a focus on Energy Policy.   He is also a graduate of Leadership Austin’s Fall 2011 Experience Austin program.

Commissioned as a Cavalry Officer, his former assignments include Tank Platoon Leader and Scout Platoon Leader with the 1/3 ACR at Fort Bliss, Texas and then in Fort Carson, Colorado.  He returned to Texas in 1998, where he commanded C. Co., 3-66 AR in the 4^th Infantry Division.  After graduate school at Harvard from 2000-2002, LTC Kopser began a teaching assignment at West Point with the Department of Social Sciences.  He taught courses in American Politics, the Presidency, and Political Participation.  While he was there, he volunteered for a summer assignment in 2004 in Baghdad, Iraq to assist in the planning of their first national elections. 

In the summer of 2005, he volunteered for his third assignment in Texas where he joined the 1-9 CAV in the 1^st Cavalry Division, Fort Bliss as a Squadron Operations Officer and Executive Officer.  After deploying to Mosul, Iraq in the fall of 2006, LTC Kopser became the Executive Officer of 2-7 CAV, where they served as the only ground battalion securing a city of almost 1.8 million people.   After returning from Iraq, LTC Kopser joined the Future Force Integration Directorate where he served as a strategic planner for the Director assisting in the testing and evaluation of the Army’s $160 billion modernization effort. 

In April of 2009, he became a strategist and special assistant for the 36^th Army Chief of Staff, GEN George W. Casey, Jr.  While at the Pentagon, he assisted in the coordination of speechwriting, Congressional relations, media relations, and executive outreach with the defense industry.   In spring 2010, LTC Kopser competed as a regional finalist for a White House Fellowship specializing in Energy National Security. 

LTC Kopser’s awards and decorations include the Bronze Star, the Combat Action Badge, the Ranger Tab, the Parachutist Badge, the Air Assault Badge, and the Army Staff Identification Badge.

He met and married his wife Amy from El Paso, TX in 1994.  They live in Austin with three daughters ages 16, 13, and 11.