Today@Sam Article
Commencement Spotlight: Nicholas Hudzinski (w/video)
Aug. 1, 2025
SHSU Media Contact: Mikah Boyd
Nicholas Hudzinski
Tomball, Texas
Master of Science in Applied Economics
Three-time Sam Houston State University graduate Nicholas Hudzinski has learned that the key to being successful and fulfilled is making connections and following your passions.
When he first came to SHSU, Hudzinski had his heart set on making the most of his college experience and becoming a filmmaker, but life had other plans. During Hudzinski’s first year in 2014, his father suffered a stroke and needed help with the family’s six other children. Ever the helper, the freshman Bearkat and caring older brother pressed pause on his studies to lend a hand.
As he helped around the family home, Hudzinski still had his mind set on advancing his education and enrolled in Lone Star College-Tomball, where he attained an associate’s degree in art before entering the Disney College Program in Orlando, Florida. While in a management leadership course at Disney, one of his instructors encouraged Hudzinski to broaden his horizons.
“He told me he could see how much I love film, but he’d also caught on to my other interests," Hudzinski said. “He advised me to leverage my interest in marketing into a career that can fund future film projects. When I left Disney, I decided instead of going back to Sam as a film major, I was going to come as a marketing major.”
With his new course plotted, Hudzinski dove back into Bearkat life in 2018 with plans to be more involved on campus. He joined multiple student organizations and rushed coed professional business fraternity, Phi Chi Theta, in 2019. In his microeconomics course, he connected with professor Fidel Gonzalez, who led a study abroad program to Beijing. Gonzalez became a mentor to Hudzinski, first encouraging him to study abroad, then guiding him into an embedded economics tutorship through the Academic Success Center and later pushing him to pursue a master’s degree.
Studying abroad in China left its mark on Hudzinski, who quickly began studying Mandarin to position himself as an international businessperson. He even participated in a language-immersion program at Tsinghua University, persevering through the challenging program that was moved online due to the outbreak of COVID-19. He also stuck to his studies at SHSU and became a Bearkat alum for the first time in 2020 with a Bachelor of Business Administration.
From there, Hudzinski continued to juggle his passions and profession, working as a concert photographer, studying Mandarin and doing videography for a colleague’s YouTube channel. Even with this abundance of passion projects in the works, Hudzinski felt something was missing.
“I decided to come back to Sam to get my economics degree because it was really important to me and I didn’t feel like I had experienced as much as I would have liked after my classes were moved online,” he said. “I wanted to go back to Sam to get that good education that I was craving, so I returned as an undergraduate student in the economics program in the spring of 2022.”
His second round of studying at SHSU was so fulfilling that it did not take much to convince Hudzinski to stay and earn his third degree: this time, an online master’s. After just a semester’s break in the spring of 2023, this ever-achieving Bearkat marched into the Master of Applied Economics program the following fall.
He remained in his Huntsville apartment where he resided during his second bachelor’s degree and used his proximity to campus to connect with professors, peers and university leaders. Hudzinski also remained heavily involved in Phi Chi Theta. Throughout his years as a member of the fraternity, he established himself as a leader and held the director of marketing, director of finance and treasurer titles. The interactions, involvement and his tutoring of fellow economics students provided him the college experience he dreamed of and positioned him as the 2025 Outstanding Graduate Student Leader and host of The Sammy’s, where he received that honor.
Hudzinski’s educational journey has been full of ups and downs, but through it all his internal compass pointed toward his deepest passions and never led him astray. For now, his true north points to SHSU, where he works as an institutional research analyst in the university’s Department of Data Analytics and Decision Support. As always, he intends to tell any student he encounters to get involved.
“Every time I meet a freshman, I tell them the same thing: do that thing, join that org, attend that event, it’s going to be great and you are going to love it,” Hudzinski said. “I am a big advocate for walking through whatever doors open to you. You never know if you’re going to like it or not and that’s how I’ve landed where I am today.”
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