This spring the Texas A&M Maritime Academy (TAMMA) launched a new tool to get cadet information in shipshape order. TAMMA at Texas A&M’s Galveston campus is one of only six maritime academies in the United States, producing officers for the Merchant Marines and seagoing military services. Some of the tools to manage this elite program for 326 active cadets needed to be refined, creating an opportunity for our team.
Over the years, academy leaders had done their best to cobble together a variety of tools and processes to maintain its cadet rosters, track discipline, and handle military letters (requests routed through chain of command). The group maintained separate copies of rosters in disparate systems, and initiated appointments using a forms tool from one vendor. They were handling merits and demerits through a different vendor product accessible only by staff, leaving cadets without the ability to track their own status. Leaders tracked cadets in the license option program in a separate spreadsheet accessible only from within the office. To submit a military letter, cadets were told to route a paper copy of the request or to take a picture of the form and send it to their commander in GroupMe. Since there was no effective means of tracking, they could not enforce deadlines for appeals.
Wondering how the 2,300-strong Corps of Cadets in College Station managed this array of processes, TAMMA discovered its counterpart was using a robust application suite that was custom-written by DoIT. That discovery led to a request to let the academy use the same tool, called CorpsApps.
DoIT’s full range of professional services kicked in. Business Analyst Jill Stickler conducted a fit/gap analysis to understand TAMMA’s current processes, to what extent CorpsApps would provide a good fit for its needs and what gaps would have to be mitigated. TAMMA’s readiness to adjust some of its procedures closed many of the gaps, making CorpsApps clearly a good fit. Project Manager Morgan Hammond prepared an aggressive project timeline for implementing the full scope of required work. The systems and database teams spun up a separate server and database dedicated to Galveston’s needs. The Service Desk prepared to handle help requests from Galveston cadets and staff.
The planned strategy involved enhancing the existing CorpsApps application so it is suitable for both College Station and Galveston, versus creating a separate application distinctly customized to TAMMA’s needs. This will make long-term support more efficient by maintaining a common set of programming code that can be configured differently. Each campus can enable or disable available modules based on specific needs.
Texas A&M Corps of Cadets’ leaders agreed to share the tool, and all teams accepted a procedure for software enhancements that could affect both campuses. An assistant director at Galveston made himself available to ensure customer responsibilities did not delay the development team.
Software Developer Mark Matusek, with the support of a student technician who was also a cadet, completed the code adjustments to satisfy the needs of both groups. In the process, the College Station Corps benefitted in several ways from the work being done for Galveston. The Technology Services – Student Affairs team replaced hard-coded templates with dynamic templates that allow the system to be more quickly adapted for revised processes. We also added new functionality to expand tracking discipline for periods longer than a term.
The Technology Services – Student Affairs team completed the project on time, trained Galveston leaders, and successfully switched TAMMA to the new system in February. Commander Eric VanVelzen, Commandant of Cadets at the Maritime Academy, was pleased the first time he had to look up cadet information with his phone while off campus one evening, a simple task he could not previously perform without heading back into the office. “It’s been a night and day difference,” he said. “Even the frequent recipient of demerits thinks it’s an improvement, so that says a lot.”
For his effort on this project, Technology Services – Student Affairs honored Mark Matusek with the Technology Services – Student Affairs Shining Star Award. “Mark served a critical role in getting the Corps of Cadets at TAMUG up and running with CorpsApps,” wrote a Galveston staff member in the nomination letter. “He walked us through what he needed from our team and worked closely with us when it came to ensuring our needs were met while maintaining the main campus Corps’ needs. Mark always reached out for questions he had about our business processes. We were especially grateful for the creation of a demo site, which allowed us to really figure out what we were missing out on. Of course, moving to the live site was equally exciting. Having CorpsApps has moved us so far along in such a short period of time. We could not have made it this far without Mark.”
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For more information about TAMMA, visit the Texas A&M Maritime Academy website.
