Winona State University is approaching the middle of the semester for Fall 2022. This past Wednesday, September 28th, College of Education students received an unexpected email stating that we will need to pay for the program known as “Tevera” which has a starting cost of $223 all the way to $268.75. In this email, students were not informed what this program would be utilized for; it simply stated that we would need to purchase the program. 

After conducting my own research, I learned that this program would be used to track student’s hours for field experience, a requirement for students within the education program. Prior to this program, student’s hours were tracked by course instructors in the College of Education. With this program, student’s field experience hours will need to be manually input by themselves as they complete this requirement. This is making college of education students wonder why we are required to pay for this program. Instead of utilizing this costly program, each student could easily create a simple document to track their field experience hours. 

The College of Education is requesting students to pay for this program with less than 48-hours notice. We are college students who do not have a disposable income to spend this amount of money with such short notice. The cost of this program is inaccessible to many students. I, along with many other college of education students, oppose this program. We believe that students should have the option to purchase this program or track their hours independently.