ACCUDEMIA USER SPOTLIGHT
Massachusetts Maritime Academy’s Tim Conlon McCombe and Anne Marie Fallon came to our Accudemia Weekly Session as our user spotlight speakers for February 15th, 2022. They talked about the unique and helpful ways they use Accudemia to manage student traffic. Click here to view their full discussion.
A Unique School, But Not a Unique Need
The Academy is a little different from your typical higher education institution. Accudemia is currently used in their Ship Maintenance Program. Once a year, about 450 cadets board a ship called the T.S. Kennedy which sails along the east coast, all the way down to Puerto Rico and other islands in the Caribbean. Along the way, they learn how to maintain and take care of a ship. The Academy needs to track the specific tasks that cadets perform, such as working in the boiler room or on the ship’s electronics, along with the hours spent on those tasks.
The need to track these hours did not start with the implementation of Accudemia, but prior to the software’s implementation, the process for tracking was very different, and much more difficult. The admin of the program had to compile all data in Excel spreadsheets and confirm information manually with cadets and staff, resulting in a lot of back-and-forth conversations and uncertainty about the accuracy of the data. Recording these hours was of the utmost importance because of requirements from the Coast Guard for certification purposes. After an audit from the Coast Guard resulted in a report that took the program admin several days to put together, the Academy knew they needed a better solution to track cadet hours aboard the Kennedy.
Accudemia = Time Saved, More Students Helped
Massachusetts Maritime Academy chose Accudemia, which is now the tracking system for the Ship Maintenance Program. When students board the ship or start a task, they swipe their school ID card on a reader hooked up to iAccu, which can log student check-ins without being connected to the internet. They swipe out again when they leave the ship. This has saved them countless hours of reporting and attendance management.
With the success of implementing Accudemia in the Ship Maintenance Program, Massachusetts Maritime Academy is now looking ahead at an expansion of their subscription, potentially implementing it in other offices such as Advising.
Tim emphasized that while their setup of Accudemia is “simplistic,” it’s also extremely effective and has made a huge difference in their program. Thanks to Accudemia, the program admin has time to do other things like reach out and connect with students who are struggling to maintain their hours, which contributes positively to retention.
We’re so thrilled that Accudemia has made such a positive impact at Mass Maritime. Thank you again to Tim and Anne Marie for coming to our Accudemia weekly session to discuss your experience. If you are an Accudemia client and you would like to talk about your experience with the system during our weekly session, contact Rachel Cook. And if you would like to view Tim and Anne Marie’s full discussion, click here.
Join us next time!
Engineerica Systems is pleased to present our Accudemia User Spotlight segment recap for 2/15/2022. Held Tuesdays at 1 pm EST (weekly during the academic year, and monthly during the summer), Accudemia clients can join a session to learn about a quick, useful topic from one of our Support Specialists. We hope that these examples help you to ponder how you might utilize Accudemia and other innovations in your own center. Check the page about our Monthly Accudemia Session to find out more about our next session and for more ideas about helping our students achieve success!
