Executive Summary
Central Michigan University’s Counselor Education program needed a new software partner that was more user friendly and eased the administrative burden on its program administrators. They found Tevera and haven’t looked back.
The Challenge
Sheri Pickover’s counseling journey started at the University of Michigan. After earning her bachelor’s degree in psychology followed by her doctorate, she started working in shelters and running counseling clinics. Her career led her back into academia where she landed at Central Michigan University in her role as a faculty member and program administrator.
When Sheri started, the program was using other assessment software. Because of the amount of manual labor and tedious tasks that went into using the system, Sheri began to search for a solution that would allow their program to grow more efficiently and keep up with their burgeoning student population.
As the person doing all of the program assessments, Sheri was frustrated that the software wasn’t as intuitive or forgiving as it could’ve been. For example, when she created something and then needed to change it, the program wouldn’t allow for those changes. It forced her to start all over again and rebuild everything for the users’ end.
So, Sheri started looking for a new software partner.
The Solution
Sheri had heard of Tevera while working at another university and decided to start exploring whether they might be a good fit for Central Michigan’s Counselor Education program.
She wanted to make sure that Tevera would:
- Reduce the administrative burden of manual data entry and report gathering;
- Increase the accuracy of the data stored within the program;
- Be able to scale to support Central Michigan’s growing student population.
But most importantly, Tevera needed to have a best-in-class customer support system.
After doing her research and taking Tevera for a test drive, Sheri was able to answer “yes” to all of the above questions and the program adopted Tevera in January of 2021.
Sheri Pickover, Ph.D., LPC
Central Michigan University
The Impact
Right away, Sheri noticed how much easier Tevera was to use, how it helped streamline their internal processes, and a significant increase in how much support their students were able to get.
First, Tevera is user-friendly.
Tevera offers easy access and accessibility not only to administrators like Sheri but even supervisors, faculty members, and students.
Sheri is also a fan of the interface and data reporting systems. With Tevera, she only has to run two reports, “I have to run one just by program and then I can run by program and cohort and everything pulled out to organize.”
Along with this, she has more control of the data with Tevera. She can easily log into the program and assess the data.
When problems arise, which they rarely do, Sheri notes that Tevera’s help desk is a great resource.
Next, Tevera has improved administrative processes.
Sheri estimates something that might’ve taken three hours in their old program now might only take thirty to forty-five minutes.
Sheri also finds it much easier to communicate with students. Before Tevera, students had to email in their applications and files. Not only did this flood her inbox, but things got lost or students were missing information. Sheri no longer finds herself reaching out to students about gathering missing elements.
Finally, Tevera offers ease of use.
And how does Tevera serve their students?
The time tracking component is huge and students love how simple it is to use and that they can do it on their phones, making it easy to stay on top of everything.
As Sheri says about Tevera, nothing is more than “a few clicks away.”