AMS is Academic Managemet Systems. The name was derived from the philosophy that we are constantly working in collaboration with our users, and that our users also benefit from working in collaboration with each other. We see ourselves as part of an academic partnership comprised of schools with similar needs. The mission of our new company is to provide excellent academic management software and information technology consultation services for health professions schools. Users are connected via a listserv and through active web pages where they can stay in touch with each other, and when they call the AMS office, both parties can view their installation details and all recent correspondence using our User Support website.
Users also train other users.
Not only does this keep costs down, it also insures a very practical approach to the training. Academic Management Systems, formerly known as TASC, was started seven years ago when the UB School of Dental Medicine decided to try to recover the costs of its administrative software development through the sale of locally developed applications to other health professions schools. Dr. John Eisner, Associate Dean for Information Resources, started TASC at the UB School of Dental Medicine with Michael Russo, our lead software engineer and project manager. From this beginning, we added a marketing and user support group, consisting of Jennifer Cucco and Linda Wyatt, as well as a second full-time programmer, Ed Brooks. Our plan is to develop one new product each year, and try to maintain and improve each existing product as recommended by our users.