The official newspaper of Stevens Institute of Technology, and creator of Attila the Duck.
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TheStute StevenstheStute
Volume CXVIII No. 16
Established 1904
February 19, 2021
Workday Student is coming to Stevens: here’s what you need to know BY JENNY FANG
Contributing Reporter March will be an exciting month, as students can say goodbye to the days of waking up in the wee hours of the morning and preparing for a morning of frantically refreshing the Student Web Self Services portal on myStevens, hoping to successfully achieve one of your seven pre-planned schedules. Workday Student is the new student information system that will be available to the Stevens community in March 2021 replacing the current, outdated system. To learn more, The Stute reached out to members of the Workday Student team, including the project lead and Cindy Chin, Associate Provost, who sent the responses on behalf of her team in this email exchange. The following is the Q&A response received, which gives greater detail of this highly anticipated project. Q: How many years was this project in the planning? A: We began work in 2016. It took quite some time because we’ve been doing
what amounts to pioneering work in helping build a student information system on the Workday platform. Furthermore, the Workday platform has been evolving over the last few years, which gave us a chance to add more enhancements to the system as our development work continued. We also experienced some delays due to setbacks beyond our control: the cyberattack on Stevens’ systems in August 2019, and challenges brought upon by the COVID-19 pandemic. I am proud to say that despite all the upheaval caused by the pandemic, our team persevered and brought Workday Student to the point where it’s ready to go live. There are now five universities using Workday Student and another 17, including us, will be going live in 2021. Q: What are some of the key improvements and aspects addressed on Workday Student? A: Workday Student is a comprehensive system that
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U. makes progress on D&I goals,
President Farvardin speaks on initiatives BY NATALIE TODARO Editor-in-Chief
On June 23, 2020, specific Diversity & Inclusion (D&I) goals and actions were endorsed by President Nariman Farvardin and Stevens Vice Presidents. Following the endorsement, the President’s Task Force on Equity and Inclusive Excellence (EIE) was formed; four goals to improve discourse and action surrounding D&I at Stevens were outlined under the “Standing Together
and Standing Against Racism Initiative,” and progress has been made to accomplish them. In a statement to The Stute, President Farvardin explained his gratitude towards the EIE task force, stating, “I am grateful to the co-chairs and the members of the Equity and Inclusive Excellence Task Force for taking on this important work. Our university community is committed to advancing diversity and inclusion at Stevens, and I look
forward to seeing the recommendations of the Task Force when they are submitted in a few weeks and working with colleagues to make measurable progress.” Susan Metz, Executive Director of Diversity and Inclusion and Co-Chair of the EIE task force, explained in an email to The Stute that her role “is to collaborate with appropriate offices and colleagues in the University
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School of Business focuses on mindfulness BY GRACE MIGUEL
Outreach Chair Last November, the School of Business (SOB) began a mindfulness initiative by teaming up with a meditation company, Headspace, to offer all students, faculty, and professors of the SOB free accounts. Mindfulness has been a topic of discussion within the school in recent years, but talk of a partnership with Headspace began in the summer of 2020. COVID-19 brought mindfulness to the forefront of the agenda due to the challenges students and faculty were and are still facing. Headspace has offerings targeted towards groups and organizations, so the SOB wanted to pilot it. This initiative was spearheaded by Professor Peter
Dominick who was assisted by Beatrice Wilson, Executive Assistant and Project Manager for the Dean of Business. Dominick teaches courses on leadership, mostly at the Graduate level and believes that being a strong leader is derived from positive psychology. He emphasized that authentic leadership implies that “I’m going to lead best when I understand what is meaningful to me.” Through mindfulness practice, one can take a moment to clear their head and remove the stress from their lives even for just a few minutes. The most fundamental leadership skill is self-awareness. Before one can lead a group, the individual must acknowledge how they feel and process it. By better understanding yourself,
you will be able to understand others. Dominick said, “Leadership is about directing attention, sometimes it’s inward, outward to people, the environment … Mindfulness is a way to develop that capacity.” Business programs want to offer a more holistic experience to help students be better prepared for the workforce, and this is one way to do so. The initiative was not just for students, faculty and staff also have access to free accounts. Dominick stated that he and his colleagues have been starting meetings with a short meditation to take a moment to pause and slow down before diving into presentations or discussions. Dominick wanted to im-
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