Workday FAQ

Travel Medical Insurance

WPI has contracted with Chubb/Ace to provide international health insurance for students, faculty, and staff for the duration of their time outside of the U.S. This coverage provides a comprehensive program of insurance benefits and services that covers 100% of the medically necessary doctor's visits and emergency care overseas. Travelers should review the entire summary of benefits (contact globaltravel@wpi.edu) for details regarding the full policy, benefits, and exclusions.

WPI's International Travel Medical Insurance and Assistance Program

International travel medical insurance is a benefit provided to university travelers while outside of the U.S. at no additional cost when travelers have registered their travel through the WPI MyTrips Travel Registry. This ensures enrollment and coverage. 

Spouses and dependents:

• WPI travel benefits extend to legal spouses and dependent children traveling with current faculty and staff on WPI-Sponsored travel. The travel itineraries for legal spouses and/or dependents can be registered in the MyTrips Travel Registry.

Please note, WPI-Sponsored travel does not include:

• Personal travel such as vacation
• Personal travel of 7 days or more before or after WPI-Sponsored travel
• Group travel organized by students, without administrative oversight and unrelated to a recognized student organization or the purpose of travel does not meet scope and mission of WPI

Travel Insurance

In addition to health Insurance, WPI encourages all travelers to consider buying supplemental insurance options to cover trip interruption and cancelation costs, such as canceled flights, travel disruptions, and lost luggage. Trip insurance is not required or arranged by WPI and must be purchased on an individual basis. There are many options to choose from regarding travel insurance. Please see this informative article by Rick Steves, the travel writer, about travel insurance- including trip cancellation insurance, things to watch out for, and links to the most common travel insurance companies.

This article from the New York Times covers what travelers need to about about trip insurance as more international destinations begin to reopen.  The ''travel insurance industry has introduced a spate of new policies covering the [COVID-19] disease.''

If a travel cancellation or disruption loss does occur, first please contact your travel agent or the airline to seek a refund or make alternate travel arrangements based on existing tickets. 

For individual Trip Interruption, Trip Cancellation or Cancel For Any Reason (CFAR) insurance plans begin your research by viewing the guidance provided by the U.S. Dept of State, the following individual options. *Note: WPI does not endorse any particular insurance company and your selection is an individual decision based on your own research, considerations and preferences. 

1. Travel Insured
2. Insuremytrip

All information you submit to the CDC or directly to an employer must be truthful. In addition to concerns of ethics and integrity, many employers verify information submitted by candidates for employment.  Discrepancies in information have resulted in the withdrawal of job offers, as well as termination of employees already on payroll following the discovery of a discrepancy.

NO PENS are permitted.

For most employees, training will occur in late summer and throughout the Fall term. Stay tuned to this space!

A separate Permission to Publish form, identifying the items to be published, must be submitted to Archives & Special Collections. Further permissions to publish must be obtained from the owner(s) of the copyright.

Born in 1798, Ichabod Washburn became an apprentice in a Leicester blacksmith shop at the age of sixteen. He attended Leicester Academy with Emory Washburn, a distant relation, and Stephen Salisbury II, both of whom would many years later be instrumental in the founding of WPI.

By 1865, Washburn was proprietor of the world's largest wire mill, making piano, crinoline and fence wire, and hoop for women's skirts. The company, owned jointly with his son-in-law Philip Moen, was the Washburn and Moen Manufacturing Company. It was located on Grove Street.

Washburn had always dreamed of setting up a vocational school for mechanics. When he heard of John Boynton's proposed gift, he came forward with a proposal of his own--for a fully equipped machine shop where indigent and deserving young men would be trained as mechanics. The two proposals were combined--Washburn's donation going for the establishment of the Washburn Machine Shop.

Neither of the two donors would live to see his dream realized. In February, 1868, Washburn suffered a paralyzing stroke. He died on December 31 of that year, only a month after the Institute opened, and before the completion of the shop building.

GQP is a capstone course and most Data Science students take it at the very last semester of their master’s program. Thus, by the time they take the GQP course, they have already taken the course works necessary for their degree. This capstone experience helps them apply their skills learned through course work in a real-world situation.

Success is when I see that our GQP work is adding value to our sponsoring companies, as well as the students’ life and the lives of other people in a positive way. Success is when I see that our DS graduate students have contributed in a significant way to finish a challenging real-life team project, meeting all deadlines with high-quality deliverables. We are trying to make a difference in other people’s lives with our GQPs and it has all been a great success.

No.

President and Owner, DEKA Research and Development Corp.

WPI is pleased to present the first WPI Presidential Medal to Dean Kamen in recognition of his visionary contributions to society, engineering, science and education. A renowned inventor, he founded AutoSyringe Inc., which made the world's first portable drug infusion pump (his earliest patent), while he was still a student at WPI. Today, he oversees DEKA in Manchester, N.H., which specializes in advanced medical technologies, including the IBOT, a revolutionary, stair-climbing wheelchair. He is the founder of FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), a nonprofit organization dedicated to changing the way American youth views science and technology. Kamen has received numerous awards and honors, including, most recently, the National Medal of Technology. He received an honorary doctorate in engineering from WPI in 1992.

Presented March 30, 2001 at Morphing Education by Infusing Technology (NCSSSMST annual conference).

Inventor of the First Practical Home Smoke Detector

An engineer, inventor, and entrepreneur, Pearsall developed the first practical home smoke detector, which is credited with saving some 50,000 lives from residential fires over the past 30 years. Like many great discoveries, the device came about almost by accident. Pearsall had founded Statitrol Corp. to make static control devices for dark rooms. While testing a prototype, he noticed that smoke from a technician's cigarette would cause a meter that measured the relative concentration of ions would instantly drop to zero. "By accident, we had discovered how to make an ionization smoke detector," he said in 1996.

Pearsall found that a Swiss company had also developed an ionization smoke detector, but it required too much power and too much radioactive material to be practical for use in homes. With the addition of a battery, Pearsall's detector became the first battery-powered home smoke detector listed by both Underwriter's Laboratory and Factory Mutual, and his company grew substantially as smoke detectors became a common fixture in homes everywhere. "It was a source of considerable satisfaction to learn that about then many instances throughout the country in which our devices were credited with saving lives, sometimes of whole families," Pearsall noted.

Pearsall's contributions to fire safety have won him many awards and honors. In 1976, President Gerald Ford presented him with the National Small Business Person of the Year award. In 1980, the Society of Fire Protection Engineers recognized him as Fire Protection Man of the Year. Pearsall was a charter member of WPI's Fire Protection Engineering Board of Advisors and has been a great support of the University's fire protection engineering program. The university has honored him with an honorary doctorate and in 1987 named him the first recipient of the Center for Firesafety Studies Herrick Drake Commemorative Award.

For his visionary contributions as an engineer, entrepreneur and technological humanist, WPI is proud to present the WPI Presidential Medal to Deane Pearsall.

Presented April 1, 2004, at the 25th Anniversary Celebration of the WPI Center for Firesafety Studies.

Yes, under your Profile icon, choose My Account > Change Preferences. Scroll down and you'll see Alerts. Make changes, then click OK.

If you'd like to see notifications on your mobile device, install the Workday app from your app store and allow notifications.

This collection is comprised of 73 sculptures created by Bernard Brenner, plus Mr. Brenner's paper archives. These include photographs of many of Mr. Brenner's sculptures besides those given to WPI, sketchbooks, drawings and paintings, computer-generated art, and news articles and publications about Mr. Brenner's work.

• Demonstrate an understanding of the project’s technical, social and humanistic context.
• Define clear, achievable goals and objectives for the project.
• Critically identify, utilize, and properly cite information sources, and integrate information from multiple sources to identify appropriate approaches to addressing the project goals.

• To introduce students to the breadth, diversity, and creativity of human experience as expressed in the humanities and arts
• To deepen students' ability to apply concepts and skills in a focused thematic area through sustained critical inquiry

• Apply fundamental and disciplinary concepts and methods in ways appropriate to their principal areas of study.
• Identify, analyze, and solve problems creatively through sustained critical investigation.
• Practice the skills, diligence, and commitment to excellence needed to engage in lifelong learning.

• Be able to make connections between disciplines and to integrate information from multiple sources.
• Be aware of personal, societal, and professional ethical standards.
• Have the skills, diligence, and commitment to excellence needed to engage in lifelong learning.

In Banner. The upgrade to Banner 9 is happening after Workday goes live. Banner will continue to be used for student information as Workday Student is rolled out in 2019-2021.

• With support from Teaching and Innovation grants, administered by the Educational Development Council, Academic Technology Center, and Morgan Teaching and Learning Center, WPI offers many courses that work to integrate STEM and social justice through assignments, problem sets, and more. This includes a 2018 Teaching Innovation Grant to PIs Lisa Stoddard and Emily Douglas to work with faculty and staff across WPI to integrate topics of social justice and STEM into curriculum in labs, projects, and assignments.

• Eight activists—including WPI alumni Shahbaz Soofi, founder and CEO of WooRides, and Asima Silva, founder of EnjoinGood.org—worked with students in the “Social Media, Social Movements, and the Environment” class to discuss how they work with people in STEM fields through their activist work, as well as help the students learn about their own path to activism.

• WPI began the STEM Faculty Launch Workshop to help graduate students and post-doctoral researchers—particularly women and traditionally underrepresented minority candidates—seeking tenure-track positions in the STEM fields.

Registering your international travel allows WPI to track all WPI-sponsored travel by students, faculty, and staff.  This helps WPI communicate with you more effectively if there is an incident during your travel and enables us to better respond to your needs.  When incidents do occur, WPI can contact our travelers in the area to confirm their well-being.

Once you register on MyTrips, International SOS will provide a Pre-Trip Advisory that lists risk in your travel area.

Once you register on MyTrips, you are pre-authorized to use, and registered for WPI’s medical and security assistance while abroad and will automatically receive alerts of incidents impacting your registered destination via email. Please download the assistance app to receive app based notifications. 

For information on the services provided by International SOS and for information on WPI's international travel medical insurance please visit International S0S: 24/7 Travel Assistance. 

No, the requestor for the requisition also has to be the person who creates the receipt against the purchase order.

• If I am locked out of my MyTrips account?

• If you try to login to your MyTrips account and get locked out, an email will be sent directly to WPI to unlock your account. Once your account is unlocked, you will be notified by International SOS. You will then be able to go in and reset your password. ​​

• MyTrips says my profile doesn't exist.

• If you try to login to your MyTrips account  and see a screen that says "Your profile doesn't exist." contact globaltravel@wpi.edu ASAP. This problem is unfortunate and inconvenient, but easily remedied.We are currently working with International SOS to make sure this problem does not persist, but in the meantime, we appreciate your patience and if you contact us, we can assist in fixing it.

• How do I cancel a trip?

• Log into your MyTrips account  .You will see your trip information below your profile.If a trashcan icon is listed at the end of a trip detail, click on this trashcan and the trip will be deleted. If your trip was created by "Agency" then it was registered as part of a group trip. Cancellation of group trips are handled by the group administrator. If you are unable to cancel your trip in MyTrips, contact globaltravel@wpi.edu and we can help. 

• How do I change my travel details?

• If your travel plans have changed, e.g. checking in a day earlier, or airline changed flight times, you can make these changed in MyTrips. The method for changing travel details depends on how the trip was registered:
• Manually Entered: Click on the trip name. Then within the trip details, click on the pencil icon and edit your trip details. 
• Forwarded Itinerary: your only option is to delete that portion of the trip and either forward your new itinerary, if you have one, or manually enter the new trip details. 
• Group Trip: The group administrator will make those changes. 
• Finally, if you need to make changes and are unable, contact globaltravel@wpi.edu, and we can help. 

• What if I booked a trip using my personal email?

• If you booked travel through a personal email address you can do two things. First, you can forward this itinerary to your WPI email address then forward to International SOS. Or you can add your personal email address to your profile on MyTrips. If your personal email address is in your MyTrips profile you can then forward any itinerary from that personal email account. 

• What if my forwarded itinerary was unsuccessful?

• There are ways that an email forward can be unsuccessful. Three of the main reasons are listed below:

  • The forwarding email was NOT an itinerary confirmation. The system will only accept itinerary confirmations; it will not take receipts or correspondences. Make sure the email you forward contains itinerary details and confirmation number.

  • The itinerary was submitted as a jpeg or png image of the confirmation. Images or screenshots of an itinerary will not be accepted. The original email confirmation must be forwarded unedited. 

  • Though the system accepts itineraries from a large number of vendors, it does not accept them all. It currently accepts flights, hotels, car rentals and bus reservations, and the list of vendors and capabilities continues to expand. If your itinerary was not accepted but it contained itinerary details and a confirmation number, it may be a current vendor limitation to the system. Contact onlinehelp@internationalsos.com with the vendor and type of travel you forwarded, and they can confirm if it is supported. If you have any additional questions regarding your upload please contact globaltravel@wpi.edu

• What if my itinerary has multiple travelers on it?

• If your booking includes additional travelers the system will only register the first traveler listed. It is best to only forward itineraries that are for one single traveler. If you are on a group booking, and not the first traveler listed, you will have to manually enter your trip details in your MyTrips account.

• What if my itinerary is a PDF attachment? 

• ​If the itinerary includes a PDF attachment, the attachment should be included when forwarding an itinerary. However, each individual itinerary should be forwarded (i.e. two attachments cannot be processed within the same email)

• I logged into MyTrips and my travel isn't there!

• The system may have caught a slight difference between the traveler information listed on the itinerary and the traveler information listed in the profile. This can cause a trip not show up in your profile. Contact onlinehelp@internationalsos.com if this happens to you.

• Can I register my domestic trip?

• Yes. However the travel medical and security insurance is only available outside the US (but does include coverage in Puerto Rico). 

• What if my travel plans have changed?

• If your travel plans have changed, you can forward the latest confirmation email including the trip change. If the trip confirmation number has been kept the same by the vendor, then the trip change will be accepted. If the confirmation number has changed, then you will need to log into MyTrips to delete the old travel information. 
• NOTE: Notification emails on changes to your trip, e.g. an email from an airline that your flight has been changed, cannot be forwarded. If your travel plans have changed and there is no updated itinerary confirmation email to accompany that change, you must log into MyTrips and manually adjust the trip information. 

• What if my itinerary is not in English? The system supports 28 languages;

Bulgarian	Catalan	Chinese	Czech
Danish	Dutch	English	Estonian
Finnish	French	German	Hebrew
Hungarian	Indonesian	Italian	Japanese
Korean	Norwegian	Polish	Portuguese
Romanian	Russian	Serbian	Spanish
Swedish	Turkish	Ukrainian	Vietnamese

PLEASE NOTE: It will not translate/convert any languages in the itinerary segments which are forwarded.  It will only parse out the necessary content based on what is provided in the itinerary.  For example, for a French language itinerary, the itinerary information will remain in French and not be converted into English.

• What if my travel is cancelled?

• Unfortunately, trip cancellations are not supported by forwarding feature. You will need to manually delete these trips by logging into your MyTrips account .

• Can I register personal travel?

• MyTrips is designated for WPI-affiliated travel only. Personal travel can be registered only if it occurs within your WPI-affiliated travel dates or 7 days before/after the WPI-affiliated trip.

• What if my question is not listed?

• Many questions can arise with a new system. If your question is not listed here, or if you need additional assistance, we are happy to help. Contact globaltravel@wpi.edu