The Graduate Admissions project concluded Phase II in March 2024, marking the end of the two-and-a-half-year effort to consolidate and streamline graduate admissions systems and processes at WashU.
“The Graduate Admissions project embodies our commitment to Sunrise’s guiding principles, like adopting common practices, enhancing user experience, and reducing administrative burden,” said Erin Culbreth, senior associate provost and Student Sunrise executive project director. “We’ve built a more inclusive and equitable experience for our students through our work on this project.”
The completion of the 16-month Phase II marks a major milestone in preparing the university’s system environment for the transition to Workday Student. Since the project launch in fall 2021, the project has:
- Replaced 9 admissions systems with Slate
- Replaced 3 paper applications with Slate
- Created integrations with Slate for 5 schools and divisions
The project will replace an additional two admissions systems and create one more integration by the end of this year.
Previously, our graduate admissions processes required significant manual work as steps were completed across multiple systems. Additionally, many of these systems were old and unstable, requiring costly upkeep and complicated fixes.
Now, this unified solution for graduate admissions will create an easier integration with Workday and reduce risk related to maintaining multiple aging systems.
“We successfully transitioned to a new system and elevated our business processes and data integrity standards,” said Jessie Runiewicz, Slate lead. “This improvement is yielding tangible benefits in institutional reporting, empowering our organization with reliable and insightful data.”
With new users in Slate, the team launched slate.wustl.edu for support and resources. Currently, the site includes training materials, login links, FAQs and contact information for Graduate Slate.