Understanding IRP Student – Admissions

Understanding IRP Student – Admissions

December 14, 2021

 

The Integrated Renewal Program – Student (IRP Student) has numerous focus areas – following the student journey from application to graduation.  This series aims to explain each area, its unique requirements, and our designed solutions in terms you, our UBC community, will understand.  

Workday Student will replace UBC’s Student Information System (SIS). It will be the foundation for the renewed student information ecosystem, integrating with external systems - both existing and new -  that are required to conduct operations at UBC. The aim of IRP Student is to deliver an Admissions solution that fulfills business needs and that will be compatible with UBC’s renewed student ecosystem. 

Workday Student’s Admissions Module does not currently meet all of UBC’s requirements.  Therefore, a decision was made to not implement the Workday Admissions Module at this time, but to instead leverage existing SIS functionality through ‘extraction’. 

Let us explain… extraction involves taking the Admissions functionality from the SIS and developing it into a standalone application. Some existing functionalities will be modernized as part of this process to improve compatibility and reliability. The look and feel will remain similar to the current SIS. This external solution will work with new systems, such as Workday Student, and with various other systems that support graduate and undergraduate Admissions processes.

 

The Admissions area of focus covers the full range of processes that take place from the moment an application is received to the moment an admission decision is made, as well as those processes that take place to manage offers of admission and ensure that UBC meets its enrolment targets. It includes the collection of supporting documents (such as transcripts and test scores), the evaluation of applications (reviewing courses completed and grades achieved, as well as non-academic components such as essays, interviews, and portfolios), making admission decisions (admitting or refusing applicants), and the management of those decisions (including confirming offers of admission, processing deferrals, managing appeals, and managing enrolment targets).

- Carina Brongers, Subject Matter Expert - Admissions.

 

IRP Student will continue to support UBC-specific Admissions processes and capabilities while minimizing business impacts and reducing the need for extensive retraining. The program aims to build on the progress from other Admissions initiatives and provide a timely solution in support of Workday Student implementation timelines. 

For more information about IRP Student focus areas, we invite you to read the other entries in this content series on the IRP Student website

*Reflecting on our experience so far in working with Workday and seeing how our design is shaping up, we realize that we have to embrace change and be confident in our ability to adapt. Workday Student, along with IRP Student’s functional requirements, are evolving quickly and this could mean that we may have to adapt our approach throughout the project timeline.