April 2009
Sheryl Shoaf, Business Analyst for the Product Services team, was one of the first employees profiled in the “Inside” series in 1995, and so much has changed about Sheryl that it was time for a new article. One thing that has not changed about Sheryl is her dedication to her job and our customers. Even today when she rarely works directly with customers, she is constantly working to make our system better for them.
Sheryl started working for the company in 1990. Her original job was working in claims for the Guaranteed Student Loan division, and she later transitioned to the position of Customer Service Representative for National Direct Student Loan customers. She left the company briefly in the mid-1990’s but returned in 1998 to work in the pre-claims and claims department for private loans. In 1999, she was promoted to the position of Business Analyst. She had applied for the position because she had a “fascination” with working with our online system, and loved the idea of interacting with many different departments in her job.
She still has not gotten over her fascination with our system and has worked on many projects to enhance it. In her current role, she is the recipient of all system requests originated throughout the company. Sheryl tracks these requests and either provides assistance in responding to them herself or she distributes the requests to other members of the Product Services team or to our programmers. These requests range from adding additional text to mycampusloan.com to creating a new report to developing a new project.
Sheryl was part of the team that recently completed a project to make imaged documents available to customers through System 3i. She worked closely with Jan Blalock, Senior System Analyst, and Vicki Vogler, Web Administrator, to make complex decisions about which documents to include and how to name, filter, and display them. Most importantly, the team worked out the details of how customers could retrieve and restore them.
Sheryl was also instrumental in developing myReports. She helped develop the ad hoc report option, choosing the fields to include based on customer requests for special reports in the past. She later added new fields to further enhance the application. Many customers use myReports to create their own custom reports, but Sheryl added that the Product Services team or Customer Service Representatives can create reports for customers and save them in their myReports library.
Sheryl, along with the rest of the team, is also responsible for product testing whenever a new enhancement is made and also converts new customer portfolios to our system. Sheryl converted loan records for the University of Louisville and Western Carolina University to our system several years ago, and enjoyed this opportunity to have contact with customers again.
Sheryl really likes the company’s commitment to teamwork. She knows she can count on members of the Product and Application Services teams to support her in whatever she has to do. Other members of the Product Services team have acted as a mentor to her and she has helped them out whenever needed. “We work together well when we have a project. We are always there for each other. The programmers are great to work with, too, and they make sure that we understand what they are doing,” Sheryl stated.
Her manager, Sharon Swaim, Director, Product Services (also one of the creators of myReports), has nothing but praise for Sheryl. “As is true of her co-workers, Sheryl wears many hats. In addition to her areas of expertise, which include myReports and general system support, Sheryl’s excellent organizational skills and attention to detail has made her a very valuable resource and member of our portfolio transfer team.”
In her personal life, Sheryl has two daughters, Ashley, who is in her first year of high school, and Carrie, who is nine years old. She and husband Rodney have been married 12 years. The couple is very committed to their family and is always on the go. Their nine year old is a member of two competitive dance teams and practices four days a week. Saturday will usually find the family attending dance competitions, which are held across the state. Last year the team participated in a national competition in Myrtle Beach and will be attending again this year.
While Sheryl has very little personal time, she does like to do crafts and occasionally has time to read, especially enjoying Danielle Steele novels. Sheryl, always concerned about others, is committed to helping the less fortunate, and works through her church to achieve that goal.
Several years ago, Sheryl headed up a unique project at our office to collect canned goods for a local charity. The incentive for staff was to collect enough canned goods to construct the Campus Partners logo. Thanks to Sheryl’s creativity, our staff had a wonderful time building our logo, and the charity benefitted when hundreds of cans of food were donated.
Sheryl is another one of our staff members, who make a tremendous contribution to our company, but never wants to be in the spotlight. We are very happy to be able to profile Sheryl again to make our customers aware of the efforts of the staff members who work behind the scenes.
