Within Workday Student, programs of study are used to organize academic functions (such as course requirements), people (such as faculty or students) and/or credentials (such as degrees or certificates). Today’s major program (MP) in SIS is the analogue to a program of study in Workday.
Several changes related to programs of study are coming with the move to Workday. These changes range from simple name refinements, which make up the bulk of what is new, to the creation of wholly new program types that allow parent-child relationships for graduate degree programs with concentrations.
“When Workday goes live, program of study codes will be less visible in our system, which means we’ll need to rely more heavily on the program name for searching,” said Trevor Bilhorn, academic foundations functional lead on the Student Sunrise project team. “We believe this will be a positive change for students as it will be easier for them to find their program and search for new ones.”
Naming convention changes
Current state naming conventions lead with the credential. For example, A.M. IN ENGLISH and AM. LIT. In Workday, programs will start with the academic discipline and list the credential as a trailing element following this pattern: <Discipline or subject>, <program of study type name if needed>, <credential>. Examples include:
- English and American Literature, M.A.
- Business, Undergraduate Non-Degree Student
- Finance, M.S.
- Chemical Engineering, B.S. (ABET/EAC)
- Design, Second Major
* Please note these changes are still a work in progress.
“Current naming convention starts all programs of study within a degree program with the same acronyms and words, which creates a challenging search experience,” said Bilhorn. “In Workday consistent and clear program of study names will improve the experience of students, faculty and staff viewing program of study information.”
Other program of study changes
The project, in partnership with the Office of the University Registrar (OUR) and the school registrars, updated or consolidated programs for clarity and to take advantage of new functionality offered by Workday:
- Removed abbreviations and clarified names, for example:
- Current state: GRAD. CERT. IN DATA SCIENCE FOR THE HUMANITIES
- Future state in Workday: Data Science for the Humanities, Graduate Certificate
- Consolidated or removed inactive programs
- Updated duplicative programs where other Workday functionality meets the business need
- Added new program types to allow for parent-child relationships where graduate degrees offer concentrations or specializations
- For example, the legacy degree program MPH [with a] concentration in Epidemiology and Biostatistics will become two programs in Workday. The MPH will stand alone as a degree program, and then students will select from a separate list of required concentrations.
- This setup should reduce the administrative burden associated with program changes and degree requirement maintenance, as well as simplify the mechanism by which the student can change to a different concentration if desired.
- Students in the past would have needed assistance from an administrator to switch concentrations. The program of study change process in Workday will allow students to make that change without assistance from an administrator.
- Updated certificate programs to situate them more effectively within the conferral process run by OUR. This follows increased compliance requirements from accreditation. Previously schools granted these credentials separately.