Jeff Ammon enlisted in the Navy Submarine Service in 1988 and was chosen to attend OSU to earn a degree in nuclear engineering. He was commissioned as an officer and joined the USS Alabama as a nuclear submarine engineer. Wanting to be as useful as possible, he was assigned to the Provincial Reconstruction Team to rebuild Afghanistan. Acting as a field engineer, Ammon supervised the building of a hospital emergency facility. Popular among the Afghan people, he was the only American to fast with them during Ramadan, which gave him credibility with the Afghans. Lt. Ammon was killed on May 20, 2008 by a homemade, roadside bomb. He is survived by a wife and two children. In his honor, the Department of Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Health Physics at Oregon State University has endowed a need-based scholarship called “Lieutenant Jeffrey Ammon Scholarship” with $25,000.
Degrees
- B.S. Nuclear Engineering, 2001