Jan. 6, 2023
Longtime CWU Flight Instructor Featured in Alma Mater’s Magazine
Dr. Amy Hoover, a professor with the CWU Aviation department, is featured in the latest edition of TCU Magazine.
CWU Aviation Professor Dr. Amy Hoover is featured in the latest edition of TCU Magazine in an article title "Flying High," which chronicles her entire professional career, starting as a college student in the early 1980s to the past 30 years as a professional flight instructor in the Northwest.
The 2022 National Certified Flight Instructor of the Year received her bachelor’s degree from Texas Christian University in 1983 and has been with the CWU Aviation program for the past 20 years. Dr. Hoover takes great pride in training the next generation of commercial pilots at Central, but she also specializes in various other disciplines, such as backcountry flying.
“I love being outdoors, and I enjoy my niche in backcountry flying,” she said in the article. “But I also like the academics and being part of a university campus.”
The TCU Magazine story talks about how Dr. Hoover became a certified flight instructor in 1992 and taught private flying lessons for 13 years. In 1998, she took a position as the aviation program coordinator at Mount Hood Community College in Oregon and taught full time while working on a doctorate in education at Oregon State University. She earned her PhD in 2005, allowing her to teach aviation to university students and devote time to the science of aviation.
According to her biography on CWU’s website, Dr. Hoover has logged more than 7,000 flight hours, including 3,500 hours giving flight instruction. She has logged over 1,200 hours of instruction time in flight simulators.
In addition to her flight instruction expertise, Dr. Hoover also has contributed to academic and aviation publications, including the textbook Mountain, Canyon and Backcountry Flying, which she co-authored. She has published more than two dozen articles in technical and aviation journals and magazines, such as Pilot Getaways and Power Cruising, and her work has been featured in the International Journal of Aviation Psychology, Collegiate Aviation Review, and International Journal of Applied Aviation Studies.
Dr. Hoover explained in the magazine article that her teaching style is a lot like the way she leads — from behind. She cultivates a supportive environment that allows her students’ passion for aviation to take flight.
“My favorite part of teaching is being able to make those adjustments so that I can best help them to help themselves,” she said. “What brings me joy is when that lightbulb finally goes off, and they put it all together.”
Media Contact: David Leder, Department of Public Affairs, David.Leder@cwu.edu, 509-963-1518