The University officially rolled out Workday, its new system for human resources, finance, and payroll processes, on Monday, July 1, 2024. The switch to Workday was first announced in November 2022, following years of planning by Information Technology Services (ITS) in collaboration with various campus stakeholders. Workday was chosen to succeed PeopleSoft, the University’s previous Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) system.
However, as experienced firsthand by students, faculty, and staff who remained on campus over the summer, the implementation of Workday did not go nearly as well as planned.
“Today we went into Production in Workday, our new HR system,” Workday Implementation Manager Steve Machuga wrote in an email announcement on Monday, July 1. “We have found some problems with integration between Workday and Workforce Force Time.”
Consequently, no student employees, temporary employees, or new hourly staff employees of the University were able to access Workforce Time and were advised to manually track their working hours for the time being.
On Friday, July 5, in another email, Machuga announced that the integration issue had been fixed, and all employees would be given an extended deadline to report their hours.
“Thank you, Wesleyan!” a July 2024 newsletter from the University’s Workday implementation team wrote. “We want to begin by extending a huge thank you to everyone for all your support and patience as we make this significant change!”
As on-campus student employment goes into full steam with the start of the Fall semester, the University’s woes with Workday over the summer—along with the recent global Crowdstrike outage—serve as sobering reminders that, just like humans, computer systems make mistakes.
In the age of AI and ultra-advanced technological prowess, the Argives’ column this week takes a dive into the myriad of technical hiccups experienced at the University over the years as each era of new technology brought its own promises and problems.
Before the internet as we know it took over the world, the University raced to ride the information highway. An article titled “University Rushes to Improve its Ailing Communications System by 1994,” written by then-Assistant News Editor Karen Gaffney ’94 on March 26, 1993, reveals the hastiness with which the University sought to improve its technological infrastructure. According to Gaffney, President William M. Chace was embarrassed by the University’s phone and computer systems back then.
“We are so behind we’re playing a catch-up game with other institutions,” Chace said.
However, the eager desire to be at the front of the technological frontier did not pan out well. According to a Sept. 16, 1994, article written by then-News Editor Michael Bass ’96, the new telephone system implemented by the University faltered within its first weeks.
“Overzealous planning for the otherwise impressive telecommunications system has led to student confusion and dissatisfaction,” Bass wrote.
According to the article, the initial goal of the project was to modernize campus communications and provide everyone with access to voicemail, but the rushed nature of the project eventually led to a multitude of glitches, including an incorrect dialing instruction that had prompted two or three dozen error calls to 911.
“The problems are largely the result of the speed with which the university has implemented the system,” Bass wrote. “The installation schedule was very short because Wesleyan is trying to catch up with its fellow collegiate competitors.”
Before access to one’s own personal computer became an expectation, members of the University community relied on public computer kiosks. This service first started on the first floor of North College, according to an article titled “Email Kiosks Pop Up in North College” by then-Assistant News Editor Carrie McCarthy ’01 on Dec. 8, 1998.
“The first floor of North College is no longer just the place to get a transcript or drop classes: now students passing through the lobby can check their email or surf the internet at two new email kiosks,” McCarthy wrote.
A decade later, when Usdan University Center opened in 2007, it also offered, among its amenities, public computer kiosks. However, according to then-Contributing Writer Dan Levine ’11 in a Nov. 2, 2007 article titled “Glitches at Usdan computer kiosks close to being fixed,” these kiosks had been “prone to frequently shut down or freeze up.”
“In the beginning of the year, almost none of them worked,” Nate Ash-Morgan ’08 said.
In his article, Levine investigated the reason for the frequent glitches.
“When they installed the new computers in Usdan, ITS chose to switch to new software, called W Kiosk, which was supposed to have made the computers quicker and easier to use,” Levine wrote. “The W Kiosk software didn’t operate as effectively as ITS had hoped.”
In the next two years, glitches made it to The Argus headlines multiple times, including in another article written by then-Contributing Writer Levine on Nov. 30, 2007, titled “Computer glitch temporarily delays adjustment period,” as well as in an April 29, 2008 article by then-News Editor Ezra Silk ’10 that delineated the shutdown of campus internet connections for several hours due to a hacker.
Perhaps the most serious glitch of these all was described in an article titled “Glitch Leads to Campus Gmail Vulnerability,” written by then-Staff Writer Brittni Zotos ’12 on April 10, 2009.
“When Information Technology Services (ITS) switched Wesleyan’s e-mail to Gmail in January of this year, students were able to log into other students’ e-mails for about a month by typing in a username and leaving the password field blank,” Zotos wrote. “This glitch has been but one of a multitude of issues facing ITS recently.”
It seems that whenever the University rushed to jump on the bandwagon of new technology, the outcome was almost always counterproductive and led to system-wide issues that were otherwise non-existent.
The exception to these cases, however, is when the University switched its online course management system from Blackboard to Moodle in Fall 2010. According to then-Staff Writer Syed Ali ’13 in his Sept. 10, 2010, article titled “University Switches to Easier, Cheaper Moodle,” the transition was relatively smooth and warmly received by faculty.
“ITS has since observed a record amount of courses brought online,” Ali wrote. “As of Wednesday afternoon, 315 undergraduate courses for the Fall ’10 semester, not including tutorials or music classes, were on Moodle, out of around 750 courses that meet the same criteria. Only about six or seven courses have been created on Blackboard this semester.”
The uneventful rollout of Moodle might be because by Fall 2010, many other schools, especially liberal arts colleges, had already adopted Moodle, and ITS worked with those peer institutions—including half of the NESCAC colleges—to develop and customize Moodle.
“We’re definitely not cutting edge in moving to Moodle,” then-Director of Academic Computing Jolee West said.
But, as we have seen from the glitches of past and present, maybe it’s okay to not be cutting-edge sometimes.
Sida Chu can be reached at schu@wesleyan.edu.
“From the Argives” is a column that explores The Argus’ archives (Argives) and any interesting, topical, poignant, or comical stories that have been published in the past. Given The Argus’ long history on campus and the ever-shifting viewpoints of its student body, the material, subject matter, and perspectives expressed in the archived article may be insensitive or outdated, and do not reflect the views of any current member of The Argus. If you have any questions about the original article or its publication, please contact Head Archivists Sida Chu at schu@wesleyan.edu and Maggie Smith at mssmith@wesleyan.edu.
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