JOINT BASE SAN ANTONIO-RANDOLPH, Texas –
The Air Force has recognized Joint Base San Antonio Education and Training Centers for their excellence in 2016.
The centers at JBSA-Fort Sam Houston, JBSA-Lackland and JBSA-Randolph, which are staffed by three active-duty members and 38 civilians, are recipients of the Nathan Altschuler Outstanding Education and Training Program award.
“It is awesome to be recognized as the best education and training center of the Air Force,” said Laurie Murphy, 802nd Force Support Squadron Force Development Flight chief. “I get the sense the men and women in the centers are proud to have this recognition but also a little surprised about the attention they have received for it. To them, serving the JBSA community and supporting the Air Force are what they do every day without thought of winning an award, though it is a wonderful honor.”
The centers manage military testing, formal training, civilian training, enlisted training and voluntary education programs throughout JBSA.
In the area of military testing, the centers manage and administer tests such as the Weighted Airman Promotion System, the Air Force Officer Qualifying Test, Defense Language Aptitude Battery and the Defense Language Proficiency Test.
The centers also manage and advise on voluntary education programs, Community College of the Air Force and Military Tuition Assistance. The centers’ civilian training function includes managing training requests for law- and safety-mandated training, and compiling and executing the annual installation training plan for nine different wings in the Air Education and Training Command.
The centers’ numbers in 2016 are impressive, Murphy said, including $6.8 million in tuition assistance issued, more than 900 CCAF graduates, 14,000 personnel tested and funding for nine wings allocated for training.
“But that isn’t what makes our achievements notable,” she said. “These three geographically separated education and training centers work together to integrate their services in support of personnel spanning across 67 square miles. In order to do this they have purposefully come together to find innovative approaches for better service and support of the JBSA personnel.”
These approaches include developing and coordinating various town halls and college fairs as one team, writing multiple concepts of operations to send out to mission partners streamlining process and gaining multi-personnel accounting symbol access to systems to assist members not assigned to their location.
“Our goal has been to serve the community as one integrated team that supports each other as well as the Airmen, and we made great strides toward that goal in 2016,” Murphy said.