Last Updated: 09/10/2024
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: Requirements were collected based on meetings with the Office of the University Registrar, McKelvey, Arts & Sciences, Olin, Brown School, Sam Fox, CAPS, Law and WUSM. This resulted in identifying 100+ fields that will have a snapshot taken from Workday Student, along with what security access will look like for this data. The snapshot will include both Danforth and Medical School students. Development activities are about 75% complete with elements like Academic Period, Cohorts, Academic Record, Programs of Study, Courses, Sections, Subjects and Student Demographics already built. The team focus is now tying the elements together and building the Faculty Section Assignment portion of the project. Development will continue through the end of September.
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: Requirements for Phase 1 have been collected. Our efforts have now shifted to an agile approach of architecting and developing simultaneously with development scheduled to be complete in October. Examples of data already flowing into the warehouse based on the team’s effort so far include Academic Period, CIP Code, Taxonomy Code and Course Section Meeting Patterns.
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: Alignment on scope with the advisory group is complete. Requirements for Phase 2 have been finalized and architecture activities will begin October 2024.
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: Development activities have completed, and testing continues. The team continues to work on mitigating items found in testing as well as working with our vendor on a known Tableau issue that is a blocker to completing the project. The new target rollout is Fall 2024.
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 have started architecting a solution, which will continue through October 2024.
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: Requirements were collected based on meetings with the Med School office which resulted in identifying the fields and systems needed to support the creation of the Availability Overview and Combined Roster reports. In addition, we have been working with the WUSM project team to stand up a 2025 Monday board to identify changes and how to pull data from that system. Development will start mid-September and run through December 2024.
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: Requirements have been approved for the Waitlist Utilization project by our stakeholder, Office of the University Registrar. Requirements consist of 60 data elements that need a snapshot taken with examples including student, courses student is on a waitlist for and meta data about the course and registration. It also addresses how often a snapshot will be taken and what access to the data will look like. Architecture activities have started and will continue into October.
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.