As leads of two functional areas that are often behind the scenes, Vivian Eberhardt and Jeff Herman are eager to “show you the money.”
When Workday Student goes live, the WashU community will see improvements made to both student financials and financial aid processes.
Vivian, functional lead for Student Financials, is excited about changes that will benefit students and the university as a whole.
“Workday Student offers many benefits to both students and the university,” Vivian said. “Much of the work being done in Student Financials is automating calculations and processes, which will free up employees to better deal with more complicated student issues. The work we’re putting into the Student Sunrise project now will greatly benefit our future selves and others when Workday Student goes live.”
Some of these automated processes include using cohorts* to charge “lockstep” tuition (students pay the same price each year they attend), rather than the current process to manually charge tuition for each individual student. Course fees, which are done manually today, will also be charged automatically and can be used to charge tuition in some cases (such as study abroad tuition).
*Cohorts are configurable groups of students who share characteristics such as program of study, academic unit, advisor, tuition rate, etc.
Jeff Herman, functional lead for Financial Aid, is anticipating seeing the work of his campus team to improve financial aid processes.
“In my nearly 24 years at the university, I have been aware of and involved with many updates, implementations, and overhauls of our systems,” Jeff said. “None compare with the implementation of Workday Student. The Student Sunrise project will have long-lasting effects on WashU’s students.”
The financial aid group’s work over the past two years will provide students a view of their anticipated aid and how it will be applied, making it easier for students to plan financial payments and understand their true financial responsibilities.
Jeff and his team also configured the entire satisfactory academic progress process, which will make students aware if their financial aid is in jeopardy, and they worked to design a suite of integrations (about 15 in all) to support information sharing to and from PowerFAIDS* and Workday Student.
*PowerFAIDS replaced WashU’s aging, homegrown Student Assistance Record (STAR) system to manage all aspects of the financial aid process for Danforth students, including applications, disbursements, award distribution and federal work-study. The School of Medicine uses a separate instance of PowerFAIDS. Both will integrate with Workday thanks to the work of Jeff and his team.
Changes in financial aid processes will include better control of how student award items are applied to charges in student financials, and a satisfactory academic progress solution where all parts of the process (evaluation, notification and appeals) occur in Workday, streamlining the process for both students and administrators.
“The positive impacts for our students and staff will be far-reaching,” Jeff said. “Simplifying how aid is used and how SAP is tracked will not only save time for staff members but also make it easier for students to understand their responsibilities, both academically and financially.”
Jeff and Vivian look forward to the improvements Workday Student will bring to their areas, especially how the automation and streamlining of student financial and financial aid processes will improve the experience of the university community and allow students, faculty and staff to focus on their goals.