Josh ’99 and Liz Moughan ’99 have established a scholarship for PhD candidates in clinical psychology to honor their late son’s journey and advance mental health education. 

Ty Moughan was always happiest when he was outdoors, fishing, learning more about tree care, making maple syrup, and eventually even building boats.  

But according to Ty’s father, Josh Moughan ’99, he also struggled with depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation for more than a decade. 

“Nature was almost a barometer for us,” says Josh. “If Ty was in a good place, he’d be outside after school. If it wasn’t such a great day, he’d retreat to his room.” 

Josh describes Ty’s mental health journey as “a rollercoaster.” Ty was reluctant to talk to anyone about it outside of his family. Instead, he tried to concentrate on his passions. At Essex North Shore Agricultural & Technical School, he studied arboriculture, found friends, and started a tree service with a buddy called Dudes Tree Service. He also connected with a recruiter from UMass Amherst’s Stockbridge School of Agriculture and decided to apply. 

“We didn’t really think college was going to be in the cards based on how Ty’s high school years had gone,” Josh says. “Academically, he was great. But the mental health aspect had made it difficult. But he applied to Stockbridge and got accepted.” 

Josh and his wife Liz ’99 had both graduated from UMass Amherst. Josh studied hospitality management and tourism at the Isenberg School of Management, and Liz pursued a degree in communication disorders from the School of Public Health and Health Sciences. They were encouraged by Ty’s enthusiasm for Stockbridge.  

But approximately a week before Ty was scheduled to start at UMass, he took his own life. 

“When your kid is in these moments of crisis, you’re just thinking about keeping them healthy, keeping them stable,” says Josh. “The stigma made it such that Ty didn’t want to talk about it. But what if he had been more open about it? What if a neighbor had a connection or knew about resources?” 

Following Ty’s death, the Moughans wanted to help others who might be suffering in silence. 

In January 2024, they created the Dirty Hands Project to increase awareness around mental health, provide education and resources for both young people and parents, and encourage people to ask for help. The project’s name and logo acknowledge the times when Ty felt his best – when he was getting his hands dirty outdoors. 

In just under two years, the Dirty Hands Project has sponsored suicide prevention training at several Massachusetts high schools, supported the creation of student-led mental health clubs, provided scholarships for those committed to addressing mental health issues, and organized Hike for Change, a fundraiser where participants join Josh to hike portions of the 200-mile Bay Circuit Trail around Greater Boston.  

“The first year, we were hoping to get 23 people to join, who would raise $500 each,” he says. “We ended up having over 160 people join us at different parts of the hike and raised close to $25,000.” 

During the first hike, Josh created a vlog to share his thoughts along the trail. For the second hike this year, he solicited stories from others about their own experiences with mental health. These videos proved extremely powerful. Over the course of May 2025, approximately 200 people participated in the hike and raised $35,000. 

“It was incredible,” Josh says. “At one point someone reached out and said, ‘I finally made a call to a therapist. I've been dragging my feet on doing this, but hearing these stories has made me finally make the appointment.’” 

Josh and Liz’s desire to expand the influence of the Dirty Hands Project brought them back around to their UMass Amherst connections.

“We really want to encourage new people to get into psychology and look at it with different eyes,” says Josh. “We thought, grad school is so expensive, and mental health is not a high paying field.” 

In collaboration with the UMass Amherst Foundation, the Moughans established the Dirty Hands Project Mental Health Education Scholarship, which provides scholarship support to students in the Clinical Psychology Doctoral Program at UMass Amherst.    

“We would love for the recipient to come out and be a partner with Dirty Hands,” says Josh. “And it does feel good to support the state university, knowing what it does for the community. It just feels right on so many levels.” 

As Josh and Liz continue to pursue partnerships with youth groups, churches, and other mental health non-profits through Dirty Hands, the UMass Amherst scholarship will contribute to strengthening the future mental health workforce. 

“There’s a lot of interest and we want to reach as many people as we can,” Josh says. “I haven’t met a person yet who can say they haven’t been affected by mental health in some way.” 

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