The SIS Modernization Newsletter

January 2024

We hope you enjoyed your winter break and your new year is off to a good start!

Chancellor Announcement: Project Extension

Before we closed for winter break, our chancellor, Dr. Russell Lowery-Hart, announced a slowdown to the Workday Student implementation project. One of the standout observations made during Russell’s First 100 Days is that our current processes are impediments to loving our students to success. By delaying the launch of Workday Student, this time gives us the opportunity to really analyze, from the student perspective, what changes we need to make to our processes before we move towards a new SIS. 

You can read the chancellor’s timeline update email here and our provost, Dr. Monique Umphrey’s message to Academic Affairs and Student Affairs here. 

What will not change is the project team’s commitment to keeping our staff informed and involved as we move toward the eventual implementation of Workday Student. We will continue to publish relevant Workday Student material to acclimate staff to the look and feel of this new system, and as our extended project timeline solidifies, our content will mold to fit the stage of the project we’re in. Please stay tuned for our future newsletters that will see a return of our helpful videos, word of the month, and game of the month.

Our team, in conjunction with the Academic Affairs/Instructional Services team, has been making strides in helping our division better understand the capabilities of Workday and all that it encompasses, and this work will not cease. Our primary focus in these next few months will be on analyzing Student Affairs internal business processes and systems to capture an accurate picture of what it means to be a student in our current state and determine how we can evolve to meet the needs of our students. This work includes examining barriers, blockers, and bottlenecks that are painful for students and/or staff that, as a byproduct, inhibit staff ability to assist students. Our analyst team intends to examine these processes with deep scrutiny and reflect on how they can be re-engineered to help us better love our students to success. 

This work has already begun! We have communicated this shift in focus to our Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) and with their help, we have started to collect top pain points in Student Affairs areas to drill in on. For the time being, our newsletters will align with the rethinking, redesigning, and reengineering of current state processes so that we can diligently begin working on improvements.