Last Updated: 2/7/2025
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 activities have wrapped up and the team is now focused on moving this project to our Test environment to begin data and process testing. Additionally, we are in the process of building out the Cognos packages and designing the gold standard reports. As an FYI, Gold Standard Reports will be a fantastic resource for anyone working with Student Data in Cognos. They will provide a reliable tool to help you check and confirm the accuracy and integrity of your data. After you create a report, you can use a Gold Standard report to compare and verify your results, giving you confidence in the accuracy of your work.
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 have successfully identified and mitigated several bugs and transitioned a few Workday data extracts from APIs to Workday RaaS Reports to enhance data quality. Additionally, we have made this data accessible in Cognos, enabling the team to begin configuring the user interface for data access. We have designed a series of “gold standard” reports that end users can employ to ensure the accuracy of their ad-hoc reports. We have also initiated the design of a new process to validate that daily data loads into the warehouse align accurately with the data in Workday Student.
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 is scheduled to begin late February starting with a focus on student demographics and program of study records.
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: Slate Undergraduate Admissions Data Warehouse has been moved to production. We continue to work closely with the Undergraduate Admissions Office during a period of hyper-care.
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: Development of the data warehouse components for the MD Phase 3 Operational Reporting project, which combines course section registration data from Workday and Monday.com (i.e., Visiting MD Students), is nearing completion. The student team has actively collaborated with the WUSM Office of Education to refine the requirements for the two reports to be built in Cognos: Course Availability Report and Course Combined Roster Report. As part of this project, we have developed a process to load and display student photos on the roster report. We have also partnered with the Student Sunrise Program to stage critical data and are currently assessing the impact of proposed changes to the Monday.com board on existing development work. The data has been made accessible in Cognos, and the development of the reports is underway, including the implementation of necessary security measures.
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: Waitlist Utilization architecture and ETL development activities have completed. Cognos package and report activities will begin in February. Data testing will also begin in parallel with Cognos component builds. This model combines Waitlist with Workday Student Phase 1 and Phase 2 (which are in various stages of testing and development). For example, Waitlist will use the same Course and Course Section Definition tables that are being developed as part of 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 hard at work developing a Cognos training plan that is based on Student Data and delivered in various formats, including 90-minute virtual learning sessions, project specific training, and eventual quick hit how-to guides/videos. To help support the development and delivery of this plan, we hired a technical trainer dedicated to the program. The first course is currently being developed, and it will focus as an introduction to building list and cross tab reports with an anticipated release date 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.