Last updated: 3/7/2025
Check back here to see what the Student Data Program team is working on and their progress.
Census Data Operational Reporting Project
Description: This project’s focus is capturing student enrollment and demographics data in a snapshot format (4th and 10th week of a semester) to support university operational, accreditation, and compliance reporting. Workday Student does not have the capability to take point-in-time snapshots, so by housing this data in the WashU Data Warehouse, the university will have for the first time a central location where colleagues can access this data.
Progress: ETL development is complete, and the project has transitioned to our test environment for data and process testing. We also are constructing the Cognos packages and designing Gold Standard Reports. Given the importance of this data set to the university and the introduction of self-service reporting on it, the Gold Standard Reports will be a resource for anyone working with student data in Cognos. These reports will ensure accuracy and integrity by allowing users to compare their own reports against the Gold Standard, verifying and confirming the accuracy of their results.
Student Model (Workday/SIS) Project – Phase 1
Description: As one of the key focal points of the Student Data Program, the Student Data Project is aimed at bringing Workday Student and SIS historical data into the WashU Data Warehouse. Phase 1 focuses on building out the foundational components of Workday Student with scope limited to Course and Course Section Configuration, Academic Calendar, Academic Units, Academic Levels, Instructional Locations and Programs of Study profiles. This phase does not include student record data (i.e. no students will be included in this phase, because student record data will not be live in Workday until February 2025).
Progress: Development on our Student Phase 1 project has been completed, and we have progressed to the testing phase. In testing, we continue to find and mitigate bugs in addition to testing the four Gold Standard Reports. We also have initiated the design of a new process to validate that the daily data loads into the warehouse align accurately with the data in Workday Student. Final preparations for user acceptance testing are underway.
Student Model (Workday/SIS) Project – Phase 2
Description: As one of the key focal points of the Student Data Program, the Student Data Project is aimed at bringing Workday Student and SIS historical data into the WashU Data Warehouse. Phase 2 of this project will provide the capability to report on foundational items of the Student Academic Record. Examples of reports enabled in this phase include detail and aggregate reporting around Students, their Programs of Study (POS), School, Enrollment Cohort, Class Standing, Load Status, Demographics, Class Registrations, and Academic Periods.
Progress: Architecture on Student Phase 2 (focused on the academic record, student demographics, and registration record-related data) is complete. Development has started with a focus on student demographics and program of study records.
Student Model (Workday/SIS) Project – Phase 3
Description: As one of the key focal points of the Student Data Program, the Student Data Project is aimed at bringing Workday Student and SIS historical data into the WashU Data Warehouse. Phase 3 of this project will expand Student Academic Records to include cohort memberships, honors and awards, athletics data, and practical learning/accomplishments.
Progress: We have aligned the scope with our advisory group and have begun detailed requirement gathering activities.
COMPLETE – Slate Undergraduate Admissions Project
Description: This project focuses on moving the existing Slate Undergraduate Admissions Data Warehouse model from an on-premises SQL server to our new cloud-based Azure Data Warehouse. In doing so, we are updating the architecture, replacing data acquisition with API calls and incorporating required Spring Enhancements. This project is being coordinated with the Undergraduate Admissions Office.
Progress: Project completed in February 2025.
Slate Graduate Admissions Project
Description: This project centers around bringing Slate Graduate data into the WashU Data Warehouse. In 2023, most of the university’s PhD, master’s and professional programs migrated to Slate (the MD program and School of Continuing & Professional Studies were not in scope). One of the main goals is to provide reporting capabilities around historical graduate applications and to make reporting easier across multiple admissions systems.
Progress: We have completed our meetings with the Graduate Admissions stakeholders from around the university to better understand how the data warehouse can help with their reporting and analytics needs. Those meetings included Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts, Division of Biology & Biomedical Sciences, School of Medicine, McDonnell International Scholars Academy, Arts & Sciences, Office of the Provost, Institutional Research, and McKelvey School of Engineering. Business requirements have been documented, and we are currently reviewing scope with Graduate Admissions Team, which will continue into early Spring 2025.
MD Phase 3 Operational Reporting Project
Description: This project focuses on reporting to support the MD Phase 3 enrollment and visiting student management. Specifically focused on recreating the Availability Overview and Combined Roster reports, it involves combining Workday Student data with visiting student data from the Monday system.
Progress: This project has entered an iterative final phase of development. We are refining the formatting of both reports based on feedback from several review sessions. We have made significant progress. In coordination with the Office of Medical Student Education (OMSE), we presented both reports to MD Phase 3 course coordinators and support staff, as well as OMSE/Med Ed leaders to gather feedback from a broader group of users. Additionally, we are incorporating a recent update in Workday that involves changes to the numbering of MD Phase 3 course sections and the addition of four new course tags.
Waitlist Utilization Project
Description: Students will be removed from course section waitlists in Workday during the second week of the semester to support clean Academic Records and Canvas Integration. This project is focused on taking snapshots of students on a waitlist throughout the registration cycle until they are removed from the waitlist, so that analytics can be performed retrospectively on how waitlists are being utilized by students.
Progress: The architecture and ETL development for Waitlist Utilization are complete, and we are currently progressing with Cognos package creation and report development, as well as data testing. The team also is working through bug mitigation from the first round of unit testing. This model integrates Waitlist with Workday Student Phases 1 and 2, which are at various stages of testing and development. For instance, Waitlist will use the same Course and Course Section Definition tables being developed in Workday Student Phase 1.
Training
Description: Given the newness of the WashU Data Warehouse and associated tools to the “student data community”, we are in the process of building a training strategy. The objective is to provide training that will lead to improved data-driven decision-making, better utilization of BI tools, and user adoption.
Progress: The team has been busy developing a comprehensive Cognos training plan centered on student data. This training will be delivered through various formats, including 90-minute virtual instructor-led trainings, project-specific training, and eventually, concise quick reference guides and how-to videos. To support the development and delivery of this plan, we have hired a dedicated technical trainer. The first course, an introduction to building list and cross-tab reports, is developed, and we expect it to be released in early spring.
Cloud SIS Reporting Database Project – Phase 1
Description: This project involves making a duplicate version of the SIS Reporting Database available in the cloud, loaded daily. Leading up to Workday Student being fully live in September 2025, users will be set up with access and can begin using the cloud version. Once Workday Student is live and SIS is retired (including the current SIS Reporting Database), the cloud version will become static but will continue to be available to support historical reporting needs.
Progress: The Cloud SIS Reporting Database project has been paused. Through conversations with our primary stakeholder, it was determined the appropriate path forward was to pause this project so university efforts can focus on supporting Workday Student go-live activities. The impact on the campus community is negligible; existing users will continue to report on students through their existing SIS Reporting Database processes. In coordination with the system retirement effort, this project will restart once Workday is fully live. This project is scheduled to restart in Q3 of calendar year 2025.