In Spring 2023, the Student Sunrise project formed three student advisory groups, consisting of 39 students from various disciplines, programs and schools, to assess Workday Student’s impact on the student experience. As a former WashU undergraduate and current graduate student, Kate Wardenburg is very familiar with the academic systems students use and jumped at the opportunity to participate in the Medical Campus Student Advisory Group.
In preparation for the Workday rollout this year, Wardenburg, together with her peers, is advising the project on how best to introduce students to the benefits and challenges associated with the transition, as well as providing feedback on student messaging, training and support resources to ensure students are set up for success in Workday.
Workday brings many benefits for students
Wardenburg is looking forward to many of the changes that Workday will bring to WashU and its students. “Workday Student is truly a big modernization from WebSTAC and the myriad of other systems we have been working in thus far,” she said. “It will allow us to keep improving as time goes on and our needs evolve and change.”
Wardenburg is a candidate in the Medical Scientist Training Program, earning her Doctor of Medicine alongside a doctorate in Biology and Biomedical Sciences with a concentration in Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Pathogenesis. As a former Arts & Sciences undergraduate and a current MD/PhD candidate, she is particularly excited about the coursework planning tools that Workday Student offers.
In the past, she’s had to rely on spreadsheets to keep track of her various program requirements, as well as her different plans for completing them. So when she previewed Workday Student and saw the detail with which she can track the requirements for her different programs, she was elated. “My spreadsheets are definitely about to be defunct!” she said.
Wardenburg added that, while these academic planning tools will be especially helpful for students like herself who are eager to plan their coursework, all students will benefit from a more straightforward way to track their requirements and progress.
Learn more about Workday’s academic planning functionality on the Planning for Registration webpage or in the Academic Planning webinar recording, part of the Workday Student Sneak Peek series.
The challenge of change
Wardenburg anticipates the biggest challenge for students during the transition to Workday will be adjusting to a new system. “Workday looks and functions differently from what we are used to – navigation to common resources like billing or registration or requesting a transcript will change,” she said.
She also pinpointed waitlist management as something students will have to adjust to. Workday notifies a student when a waitlisted seat becomes available, and the student will have 72 hours to accept or decline the spot in the class.
Ultimately, she encourages students to trust that everything will be okay once they’ve spent time in the system and feels confident that Workday will very quickly become the new normal.
Learn more about waitlists and other changes that the transition to Workday will bring for students.
Workday training and support resources
While acknowledging the growing pains that may come with learning a new system, Wardenburg encourages her fellow students to leverage the project’s training and support resources to help ease the transition. Upon testing them in April, Wardenburg said she appreciates the simultaneous breadth and depth of the training material available to students.
“The tutorials and instructions are super usable in that you can very easily find a quick answer to a question you have or get a really detailed walk-through of the system depending on what you need. Plus, there are lots of tips and hacks in the tutorials that will help you really make the system work for you.”
Wardenburg also praised the Sunrise team’s dedication to ensuring the transition goes as smoothly as possible for students during go-live year. “They have been so keen to receive and implement feedback. It’s obvious to me that they genuinely care about delivering a useful and meaningful product that will improve how we all interact with the university,” she said.
“This extends to the roll-out too! So, while this change might be intimidating, I hope people know it is not some random change – a ton of thought has gone into this upgrade, and there is immense support available for individuals who might run into roadblocks during the transition!”
Important upcoming student readiness event: Mock enRoll
Wardenburg emphasized how much getting early access to the system as a member of the student advisory group assuaged her concerns about how she will use Workday to do the things she needs to do on a regular basis. She believes that this too will be the case for students who attend Mock enRoll, a series of readiness events designed to help students practice in the system before they begin using it in February.
As a student herself, Wardenburg said students should jump at the chance to gain access to Workday in a low-stakes setting and build their familiarity with the system before they actually use it to register for classes. Each school will host a Mock enRoll event between Nov. 11 and Nov. 21 this fall. Since these are drop-in events, she recommends students pick an event that works for their schedule so that they can feel confident using the system once it goes live.