Project Wakeday launching newsletter

April 5, 2023

A message from Project Wakeday.

Work continues on Project Wakeday, the University’s upcoming, phased rollout of Workday Student.

The Wake Forest team, in collaboration with implementation partner Huron, spent March reviewing design and configuration decisions made during hours of discussion with faculty and staff representatives.

“Project WakeDay continues to engage and deliver updates to various stakeholder groups across the Wake Forest community,” says Project Director José Frausto. “In March, we discussed some pretty critical topics around registration and student financials. We also addressed some key WFU processes and created prototypes with Huron. This work, coupled with efforts by the data-conversion team, provided us with a tenant (or instance) of the Workday environment. In April, we will use this tenant to continue validating data and to kick off some additional testing.”

To keep the community up to date, a dedicated newsletter launches later this month. It will include quarterly updates about Wakeday progress, as well as articles about Wake Forest community members involved in the decision-making process. Subscribers can also expect informative pieces about what it’s like to be part of the internal teams of such a large project, and how faculty and staff share their expertise and unique University perspectives at every step.

“Project Wakeday is an important project that is going to transform the way we access data and improve the overall experience. This will allow us to focus on what is most important — our academic mission,” says Provost Michele Gillespie, one of the project’s executive sponsors. “There will be a lot of information coming out in the months ahead, so I encourage all faculty and staff to sign up to receive the updates from the Project Wakeday team. Change is not always easy, but connecting with the Project Wakeday team, giving feedback, and staying engaged with their progress will result in a much easier transition.”

The April newsletter will feature a video describing how students, faculty and staff will use Workday Student, as well as insights available on the updated Project Wakeday website, which now features a timeline. A January-March 2023 update will also be included.

“It’s inspiring to see so many community members dedicated to a common goal,” says Workday Communications Specialist Abby Langston, who joined the University in February. “I’m excited to regularly communicate what’s going on and to help the team offer transparency into such large-scale change. The newsletter and website are excellent ways for all of us to be prepared to help Wake Forest take this step forward.”

All community members are invited and encouraged to subscribe to the newsletter by visiting this link to join the Project Wakeday Google group. Questions and thoughts related to the project can be shared using this form or sent to WakeDay@wfu.edu.