Dave Fletcher, D. Min, is Director of Admissions at Barry University School of Podiatric Medicine in Miami Shores, Florida. When he assumed that role in early 2017, the institution was already using its Liaison-powered American Association of Colleges of Podiatric Medicine Applicant Service (AACPMASTM), an online admissions portal and data-management resource also known as a “Centralized Application Service,” or CAS™ for short.
AACPMAS helps simplify the process of applying to podiatric medicine programs for students as well as admissions professionals. Although Fletcher had heard about Liaison’s CASs, he had never previously worked with AACPMAS — or any other CAS, for that matter.
“In my previous job, we are able to upload and store documents in OneDrive, but it was not a very user-friendly system,” Fletcher noted. “One person was always the ‘owner’ and everybody else who was not the ‘owner’ had less access. So, after I got here, I decided to start really delving in to what the CAS can do.”
The solution: More convenience, less paper
It didn’t take long for Fletcher to realize that AACPMAS offers two major advantages over other systems he had used: It allows access from a variety of remote platforms and would help him achieve his personal goal of going paperless in the Barry University admissions office.
“I like the fact that I can use the CAS from just about any platform,” he said. “When I travel, for example, I can work on the CAS from my laptop, my phone or my iPad. That’s important.
“Once I started really learning how to use the CAS, I knew that we could use it to achieve another of my long-time goals: going paperless,” Fletcher added. “Now we are paperless. Everything is done in the CAS. It’s a one-stop shop that contains everything, that does everything. It’s working amazingly well for us. If an applicant called me with a question when we were still using paper, I’d have to track down that file. Now I can be in New Zealand and look at it. I don’t need anybody to track down anything.”
The university’s outcome: Shared ownership and customization
“With a CAS, everybody is a primary user,” Fletcher said. “Everybody is an owner. Once you give somebody privileges or permissions, they have the same access you have — or whatever level of access you want them to have. That makes things so much easier.
“I also really like being able to customize so many different local status designations. Because we can create a unique category for each step of the application process, the CAS allows us to do a much better job of managing applications and tracking applicants,” Fletcher said. “When it comes time for me to report up the chain, I don’t have to wonder who’s where. As long as we’ve been doing our work every day, all I need to do is look at the number of applicants in each status designation. It’s all right there.”
With AACPMAS, Barry University School of Podiatric Medicine:
- Provides a single convenient, user-friendly interface that simplifies the application and admissions process for students and staff, from application submission through the first day of class.
- Enhances efficiency by automating all aspects of communications so that applicants received meaningful messages that address their exact situation.
- Significantly reduces time-consuming office tasks, such as processing mail, answering calls from applicants and manually organizing/storing and retrieving files.