Amy Moorash
Hall of Fame Class of 2020
Amy Moorash serves as chief of the U.S. Army Continuing Education System with a focus on improving both the quality and accessibility of postsecondary education to adults worldwide.
Her career in military education began at the University Maryland University College in Europe, where she served as the director for Central Germany, the Middle East, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and Honduras. In this role, she managed and oversaw postsecondary programs and faculty staffing, as well as taught college classes in the social sciences. Later, she worked on Army education policy for online learning success and championed phased worldwide implementation of the Army’s premier online learning program, eArmyU. She created a pre-assessment readiness profile with New York University that assessed soldier locus of control, tolerance for ambiguity, self-efficacy, and learning styles as readiness predictors of online learning success. Perhaps Moorash’s greatest contribution to the field of adult education has been her ability to remain agile, shaping the menu of Army postsecondary adult learning on a global scale.
She founded the Army’s Career Skills Program (CSP), which provides vocational education with partners in industry and academia to bridge the gap to careers for separating military. Industry employers and colleges deliver vocational training during the last 180 days of a soldier’s military service and promise a career in the industry at no or minimal cost to the soldier. More than 21,000 soldiers have completed one of 208 CSPs at 32 installations worldwide with an impressive 93% hire rate.
Her work with the Florida State College at Jacksonville resulted in making academic content accessible by military adult learners using hand-held computer devices delivering content without the internet. She also re-optimized and restructured end-to-end education services to critically ill and wounded soldiers at Water Reed Army Medical Center through the creation of an Adaptive Technology Program that allowed wounded soldiers to attend college using assisted technology devices to promote lifelong learning/resiliency. She and her team completely redesigned the Basic Skills curriculum by lengthening the program, developing repetitive learning exercises and improving the learning environment, and working with the Department of Defense to bring in specialized equipment that allowed soldiers to become self-reliant learners, contributing to their sense of achievement and resiliency.
In 2019, she successfully negotiated to keep Army Education at 75 garrisons worldwide under her direction to safeguard soldier choice for postsecondary education versus training. Moorash received AAACE’s Tilton Davis Jr. Military Educator of the Year Award in 2009, Harvard University’s Innovation in American Government Service Award for development of the Career Skills Program in 2018, and CCME’s President’s Award for her dedication to military education in 2019.