Santa Clara University will be moving student-related activities from eCampus to Workday Student starting in late October 2022. Workday Student is a cloud-based mobile friendly student information system. This change will further position Santa Clara University at the forefront of innovation by providing anytime anywhere access for many of the tasks faculty, staff and students perform on a regular basis.
Here is a quick look at what you can expect from Workday Student:
- For Faculty
- As a faculty member you’ll use Workday Student to enter and change final grades, access your courses, check enrollments, accessing grade roster for a course, changing grades, checking student participation, and more.
- For Student
- View your schedule and grades, register for classes, add or drop classes, see your housing assignments , view financial aid details, view academic progress, pay your bill.
- For Staff
- Find student information, update student records, disburse financial aid, assist with student advising, view academic progress of students.
- For Parents/Guardians*
- View student’s academic and financial aid information, setting up payment and refund elections, pay bill online
*Note – student must give permission to parent/guardian through third party access.
Frequently Asked Questions
In early 2015, Santa Clara University put together a small group of power users representing the major functional areas on campus and they spent nine months looking at alternatives to Peoplesoft.
In May 2016, we brought both Oracle and Workday onto campus for a shootout. For two weeks, our user community went to presentations and tried the products.
We asked our users (faculty and staff) to rate both products, and at the end of the day, the 303 users who turned in surveys preferred Workday in 43 of 45 categories.
Workday was selected based on functionality, usability, total cost of ownership, and ability to meet SCU’s business requirements. Because it is a cloud solution, it is easier, quicker, and less costly to implement and operate than traditional enterprise systems.
Workday Student provides a streamlined system for students as they engage with SCU throughout their academic career enabling them to:
- Update personal information
- Register for classes
- Add or drop classes
- View grades
- View financial aid and financial information
- Access advising information
The short answer is that Santa Clara cannot continue to use Peoplesoft and our user
community (faculty and staff) chose Workday to replace it.
Santa Clara University acquired Peoplesoft (ERP) (Enterprise Resource Program) in the mid
1990s.
By 2014, it was abundantly clear that Peoplesoft would not be able to meet our growing
campus technology needs. Peoplesoft represented antiquated, decades-old software design;
was not user friendly; was very costly and difficult to support; was extremely difficult to
upgrade, given the large number of modifications made to the original source code; had
numerous, glaring security issues; and was not designed for the mobile environment.
The final impetus in making the decision to look for a new system to replace Peoplesoft
was the March 2015 Oracle announcement that they would stop enhancing our on-premise
Peoplesoft Student system in December 2023, and that they would be committing their
resources to moving their products to the cloud. This meant that if we stayed with our existing
system, we would not get new functional enhancements, fixes, security alerts, critical patch
updates, and new tax, legal, and regulatory updates.
It is our top priority to insure that all employees and students have access to training and are thoroughly prepared before Workday Student launches. Training courses, including in-person and virtual, will be available as well as training videos and step-by-step guides.
We are planning to flip the switch and have Workday as Santa Clara’s new Student Information System (SIS) beginning on March 6, 2023.
Time flies when you’re having fun! Yes, all faculty, staff and continuing students will be able to access Workday’s new SIS functionality on March 6th. That does not mean that our current SIS (eCampus) is going away immediately. Nor does it mean everyone will need to use Workday for SIS transactions right away. SCU faculty, staff and students will continue to use eCampus for such things as advising, grading and accessing course rosters for all terms through Summer 2023. Workday will be the system of record for all terms starting with Fall 2023. As such, we will introduce Workday in phases with different parts of our community as they approach key milestones (such as registration) for Fall 2023.
That would be our Admissions and Financial Aid offices. In fact, they have been using Workday Student since November 2022. The next part of the Santa Clara community to use Workday for registration, advising and financial services will be our Jesuit School of Theology in Berkeley. JST students and faculty will begin using Workday in mid-March. In the coming weeks we will be sending out detailed communication to JST-only students, faculty and staff on available training resources, and have on-campus help resources available leading up to their Fall 2023 registration period.
Undergraduate students will start to use Workday Student in April 2023, in preparation for their advising sessions in May and then Fall 2023 registration. The Office of the Registrar will be sending a detailed checklist to all students on how to get started in Workday. Undergraduates will need to complete onboarding steps in Workday before they complete May advising. To help students understand Workday they will be able to access quick reference guides designed specific for students and attend drop-in live sessions.
A similar process will be followed by Jesuit School of Theology students in April and Law students, starting in May, in preparation for Fall registration in June. And then the remaining graduate programs (Business, Engineering, Pastoral Ministries, and ECP) will start in June, in preparation for Fall registration in July. Students, staff, and faculty in each school will be contacted with updates on Workday and available training as we get closer to the Fall registration period.
All students starting at SCU in Fall 2023 will start to use Workday in the Summer when they register for their first year of classes. By this time all SCU students, faculty and staff should be using Workday Student as our Student Information System.
Training classes will be offered for the various groups of users just prior to their need to use Workday Student. So, for the first group of users of our new system – JST folks – training will start the week of March 6, 2023. Please know that even though our JST colleagues and students will be the first group targeted for Workday training, any of you are welcome to take the training whenever and how often you want.
We will be offering one-hour classes in person and through Zoom. Drop-in sessions will be available as well. Faculty, staff will also be able to access quick reference guides that highlight the key steps to complete specific tasks in Workday. More information on training will be forthcoming in the coming weeks.