A silent savior to the Registrar and Student Accounting, Dina Damskaya writes scripts to automate many processes that have long been manual and burdensome for staff in these departments. From creating a smooth process for student onboarding, to building an application that will help match medical and graduate students with likeminded alumni, Dina's work helps simplify many complex systems at WCM.
What’s your current role at WCM?
I am trying to simplify complex things. When I joined, onboarding a student took days, sometimes longer. And now I’m working on a process to expedite the onboarding so that student accounting can process the financial part and whatever else the students need to begin their education at Cornell. I'm extremely happy to script anything that can be possibly scripted to alleviate the efforts and accomplish more projects to benefit our group.
How many years have you been with ITS?
It will be five years in November.
What is your favorite part about your job?
Actually everything, but of course the most important is when I hear Student Accounting or Registrar Offices say “wow, that's magic, that’s perfect!” We know the Registrar has it very tough as well as Student Accounting. There are a lot of students, a lot of information to process, and I'm trying as hard as I can to alleviate their efforts because there's so much data entry, and ETG is trying to bypass that to make it all more accurate. And it goes beyond just the students, there's alumni and new student engagement, too.
What did you do before you joined ITS?
I worked at Pearson K12 Technology. The role was similar to what I do here, but for the district schools nationwide for less-privileged kids to track their success and properly distribute funding.
And what drew you to Weill Cornell?
Weill Cornell was always my dream job, since the moment I learned about it. But how I came to work here was because the Pearson job finished, our project was purchased by a bigger corporation and they had double the IT personnel, so they had to let go of half of the team.
What are some examples of projects or initiatives you've been working on to improve IT for the Weill Cornell community?
My first one that was a big success was the integration with WebAdmit for MD and MD-PhD students. Because before it was a more effort to process and onboard them because it was all manual. Now it flows so smoothly. If the students withdraw, defer, come back - before they just fell off the radar and students were unaccounted for. In addition to this integration, more programs participated in this process, such as MS and PhD. Another big project we're working on right now is an Alumni project. Our goal in this phase is to help the Medical School to match current students with WCM Alumni. If the current students have an interest in something, we can match them with the Alumni so that they can mentor the students.
Oh that's great. How far along is that application? When do you expect it will be available?
We're in phase two. Right now we are trying to work with the medical school to discover what data they want to see on the Learn portal that will help them to match their students.
It's been a couple of years, so maybe it's not feeling that new, but what has your experience been like as we've adjusted to remote work?
It's been fine because I worked remote before. The hardest part is to tell my family, "I'm not home, I'm working."
What keeps you inspired and motivated day in, day out?
All the wonderful people around me. For example, Sherisse. She was the first one to greet me when I’d just started at Cornell. I was sitting across from her, and I'm shy and didn't know anyone, and she just helped me along. And all of the wonderful people that I hear in our ETG group, and all of the ideas, and magical things that are happening here, it makes me want to shine along.
Who are some women you admire and why?
Some of my friends and women in my community who are trying to help disadvantaged women who have escaped bad relationships and have young children, trying to find them a home, and get donations for things they need. My friend works with teenage moms, so she is knitting clothes for the babies. She's trying to help show that there is life after, and they don't have to give up their babies. Some women are trying to help elderly who don't have family anymore. They cook and bake for them. They’ll bring holidays to the nursing homes, or their houses if they live alone.
Wow, what are these organizations?
The local Jewish community, or Christian community. Whenever help is needed, they are there.
What do you like to do outside of work?
Everything and anything that I can. Depending on the season, I like to fish. I like mushroom hunting. I like to sightsee and walk. And of course, I like to cook. A recent passion I discovered about five years ago was baking sourdough bread.
I like growing things. I’m learning languages. If there's possibility, I travel. I love history. Yesterday we took my friends walking around Manhattan because I know some of the stories that they didn’t. We look around and they learned some history.
When will you plant your garden this year?
I already started because Spring is near. I'm preparing these seeds and I have some tomatoes that somebody gifted me that they brought from Ukraine, because they don't grow here in America. I'm eager to start planting outside again. I love watching my flowers when they bloom. Each in their season, and trying to plant so they make people happy from early spring to the late Fall.
Dina's roses
Lilly of the Valley
Last of season tomato harvest
And where do you do the mushroom hunting?
Wherever possible. I live near the woods in North Jersey, so I have some places to go to not so far from home. For example, near a reservoir area I discovered that there are morels grow when it’s season.
Locally-foraged morel
Northern-tooth mushroom