MAJ Erin Norton

MAJ Erin L. Norton is a physics instructor in the Department of Physics & Nuclear Engineering at the United States Military Academy (USMA) in West Point, New York.

She hails from Lewisburg, West Virginia, and became a USMA cadet in 2010. She commissioned as a second lieutenant into the Army’s Adjutant General branch upon graduation in May 2014 with a Bachelor of Science in nuclear engineering.

After graduation, MAJ Norton attended the Adjutant General Basic Officer Leadership Course at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. Her first duty station was at Fort Eustis, Virginia, where she was assigned as a human resources platoon leader in the 510th Human Resources Company. She became an officer in charge of the 510th HR Company and the 52nd Theater Gateway for the two units’ realignment under the 10th Mountain Division’s Sustainment Brigade. Stationed at Fort Drum, New York, under the 510th HR Company, she served on a 24-hour prepare-to-deploy order for a year.

After that year, MAJ Norton became a 510th HR Company postal platoon leader, attending Postal School with her platoon, run by a mobile training team from the Soldier Support Institute out of Fort Jackson, South Carolina. She then deployed for nine months, leading her platoon in support of Operation Inherent Resolve in Kuwait and Iraq, spread across seven locations, including four Department of Defense Army Post Offices in Kuwait, two Department of State diplomatic pouch offices (Basrah and Erbil, Iraq), and the Regional Mail Distribution Center in the Baghdad Diplomatic Support Center, Iraq. Her platoon oversaw the successful accountability and handling of all the theater’s 2016 general election military absentee ballots.

Upon redeployment in May 2017, she moved to Fort Jackson, attending the Adjutant General Captains Career Course. A year later, she became the battalion S-1 for the 1-4 Infantry Regiment (USAREUR’s Opposing Forces) at the Joint Multinational Readiness Center in Hohenfels, Germany. In 2019, she earned the prestigious title of USAREUR’s Human Resources Officer of the Year. After serving as the OPFOR battalion S-1 for two years, including just under 20 JMRC rotations, she moved to Spokane, Washington, to serve under USMEPCOM, a joint command.

Starting in March 2020, MAJ Norton served as the operations officer for the Spokane Military Entrance Processing Center for over two years during its digital system and packet modernization for both medical and processing sections. She and her team tested, processed, enlisted, and shipped over 1,200 applicants to nine service branch recruit training commands.

Thereafter, she attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she wrote a thesis on “A Feasibility Study on Aerial Drone Landmine Detection via Neutron Generator Probing” and earned her Master of Science in nuclear engineering in 2024.