After next year, students will no longer grab pink slips to change their majors or race against the clock to register for classes, because the Center for Student Success is changing the way students plan their time at Calvin. 

On March 7, 2022, the Center for Student Success will roll out Workday Student — a new scheduling system for course registration and academic planning. The transition from the current Self-Service system to Workday Student will be completed by fall of 2022. 

According to Thea Brophy and Jennifer Heeringa, Center of Student Success co-director and project manager respectively, the Workday transition is a key component of Calvin’s Vision 2030 Strategic Plan. 

In keeping with the plan’s innovative digital strategy goal, the transition to Workday’s modern software will keep pace with the needs of the institution, as stated by Heeringa. The first phase of the Workday rollout across campus, which included human resources, payroll and finance, was implemented in July 2020. 

“We have only a handful of central IT systems that do so much. And so part of the decision to change was finding a product that could do everything that we needed for all of these different departments,” Brophy said. “This is a great opportunity to make sure that we’ve got a product that’s more user-friendly for everybody, so we’re excited about this.”

Some of these “user-friendly” benefits include the option to build and explore multiple four-year plans, create multiple schedules for registration (in case a class fills up and a student can’t get into it), send a request to an advisor to change majors, sort academic requirements, and customize settings for parents (if a student wants them to be able to pay bills but not see grades, for example). You can also download the Workday app and do all of this from your phone. The system will be able to handle many more students registering at once, so there will be registration days for entire grades rather than specific times for groups of students within each grade. However, four-year plans from Self-Service will not transition to Workday; students will have to redo their four-year plans on Workday. Registration for 2022 summer classes will still happen via Self-Service.

To help students learn and get used to the new system, the Center for Student Success plans to host in-person training sessions facilitated by student ambassadors familiar with the system. They will also provide access to other learning methods such as training videos and infographics. To prepare for and successfully navigate this transition, Brophy stressed that students should pay close attention to all communication from the Center for Student Success.

“We really believe that Workday Student is going to be a better experience for students,”
Brophy said. “The one way that it won’t be a better experience is if students aren’t on top of what’s happening with the transition. If they’re not paying attention to the training stuff or not paying attention to the deadlines, that’s how they won’t really understand what’s going on.” 

So as March draws closer, students should check their emails, keep an eye out for posters around campus, and follow the Center for Student Success on Instagram: @calvinstudent.success.