Student Sunrise is a once-in-a-generation project that will replace many of the information systems that currently support WashU’s academic areas, reimagine operations in the academic and student support space, and improve student experiences during their time at WashU.
A central component of the project is replacing our Student Information Systems (SIS) and many additional student administrative systems with Workday’s Student platform. While our current SIS is old, fragile and in need of replacement, Student Sunrise is about much more than new technology.
“The Student Sunrise project is a unique opportunity to examine the tools, processes, policies and structures that support our academic mission and to make enhancements that will better serve our students, faculty and academic staff, and WashU as whole,” said Beverly Wendland, provost and Student Sunrise executive sponsor.
Through this project, we are rethinking how we serve our students in key areas like registration, advising, curriculum management and student financials. Specifically, we’re examining the structures, processes, policies and systems supporting how students register for classes, track their progress, get support and more. Another key outcome is to make it easier for faculty and staff to access quality data to make informed decisions related to our educational mission.
Learn more about the current challenges driving our need for change, our long-term goals with this work, and which projects are included in Student Sunrise.
Workday Student
Our Workday Student implementation is at the heart of the Student Sunrise project.
Workday Student will serve as our foundational system to support student and academic operations at WashU. It will replace the 30+ systems that make up our Student Information System (SIS), including WebFAC, WebSTAC and WUCRSL, as well as many additional student support systems operated by our schools and units. Workday also will integrate with other university systems like Slate (undergraduate admissions) and PowerFAIDS (financial aid) to share data and complete core academic processes.
Consolidating many of our student tools into a single, integrated system will help streamline operations, reduce manual processes and provide faster, easier reporting for decision making. And because we’re buying a system instead of building our own, we can better support our systems while addressing schools’ and students’ evolving needs into the future.
“With Workday Student, we’ll be able to more easily answer essential questions in support of our academic mission, like how students with a particular academic profile have performed and who teaches what.”
Erin Culbreth, associate provost and Student Sunrise executive project director
Workday is a leading provider of cloud-based administrative systems, particularly in higher education. While a few of our peers currently use Workday Student, we are an early adopter of the system and have a unique opportunity to influence the product’s development and functionality to support complex academic research institutions like ours.
Additionally, Workday’s HCM, Finance and Student solutions operate within a unified platform. WashU went live with Workday’s HR and finance platform in July as part of the MyDay program. This means that we’ll have a single, university-wide source for much of our student, finance and human resources data that’s updated in real time in the cloud.
“Because student, financial and HR data will be housed in one integrated system, we have a powerful new tool that in time will allow us to answer an even broader range of questions,” said Culbreth.
Learn more about the Workday Student project, including which academic and student functionality areas Workday will support at WashU.