Issue link: http://gijobsdigimag.epubxp.com/i/728631
G.I. JOBS | OCTOBER 2016 | is because of the very nature of those more combat-related MOS's. Two examples already in place are our air traffic controllers who are required to be certified by the Federal Aviation Administration before operating an airfield tower and our medics, who are required to be Emergency Medical Technician (EMT) certified every other year. We are working diligently to solidify more of our vocational credentialing efforts and could see most of our MOS's having some type of partially aligned civilian credential alignment in the near future. As far as academic credit, we have worked very hard with the American Council on Education to increase our throughput in regards to curriculum review for academic credit hour transference. Army University has also worked very hard to increase the number of partnerships with colleges and universities in regards to Cooperative Degree Programs. It's been just over a year since Army University was created. What has been the biggest challenge in geমng it off the ground? Davenport: It's bringing it all together. TRADOC on any given day has over 50,000 soldiers in training. And when you talk about school systems spread over various states trying to organize into one common organization, one common standard, one accrediting body, that's going to take some time. The approach that they've taken has been very sequential, focusing on the POIs, focusing on the instructors, focusing on the transcript to record that training. What short-term goals were you able to accomplish over the last year? Davenport: We had over 14,000 Non-Commissioned Officers – sergeants – that had not been to the required level of professional military education required of the grade they were in. There are many reasons why they weren't going to school, but it was not for lack of capacity – we had seats for them. There was just no reason for them to go to school. They could keep deferring it. The policy we now have in place is helping to get our NCOs to school. So that's one. The other one that I would say is the implementation of the writing assessment. It's called the Criterion Writing Assessment, and it's a web-based assessment that every soldier will take before entering professional military education. And it's a simple drop-down menu. You get a subject, and you have up to 45 minutes to write as much as you want. And then once you upload it, within a few minutes it comes back and it tells you, 'Your grammar is poor,' 'You need to work on your spelling,' 'You don't understand the composition of a narrative – the body, the topic sentence.' I'm trying to think of everything that was wrong with mine … And then you get a score. Then it gives you some things you can work on. And what we're doing inside our professional military education is we're actually now teaching writing