diff --git a/lms/djangoapps/dashboard/views.py b/lms/djangoapps/dashboard/views.py
index f5929f241b..e74d462432 100644
--- a/lms/djangoapps/dashboard/views.py
+++ b/lms/djangoapps/dashboard/views.py
@@ -1,39 +1,82 @@
 # Create your views here.
 import json
 from datetime import datetime
-from django.http import HttpResponse, Http404
+from django.http import Http404
+from mitxmako.shortcuts import render_to_response
+
+from student.models import CourseEnrollment, CourseEnrollmentAllowed
+from django.contrib.auth.models import User
 
 
 def dictfetchall(cursor):
-    '''Returns all rows from a cursor as a dict.
+    '''Returns a list of all rows from a cursor as a column: result dict.
     Borrowed from Django documentation'''
     desc = cursor.description
-    return [
-        dict(zip([col[0] for col in desc], row))
-        for row in cursor.fetchall()
-    ]
+    table=[]
+    table.append([col[0] for col in desc])
+    table = table + cursor.fetchall()
+    print "Table: " + str(table)
+    return table
 
+def SQL_query_to_list(cursor, query_string):
+    cursor.execute(query_string)
+    raw_result=dictfetchall(cursor)
+    print raw_result
+    return raw_result
 
 def dashboard(request):
     """
-    Quick hack to show staff enrollment numbers.  This should be
-    replaced with a real dashboard later. This version is a short-term
-    bandaid for the next couple weeks.
+    Slightly less hackish hack to show staff enrollment numbers and other
+    simple queries.  
+
+    All queries here should be indexed and simple.  Mostly, this means don't
+    touch courseware_studentmodule, as tempting as it may be.
+
     """
     if not request.user.is_staff:
         raise Http404
 
-    queries = []
-    queries.append("select count(user_id) as students, course_id from student_courseenrollment group by course_id order by students desc;")
-    queries.append("select count(distinct user_id) as unique_students from student_courseenrollment;")
-    queries.append("select registrations, count(registrations) from (select count(user_id) as registrations from student_courseenrollment group by user_id) as registrations_per_user group by registrations;")
+    # results are passed to the template.  The template knows how to render
+    # two types of results: scalars and tables.  Scalars should be represented
+    # as "Visible Title": Value and tables should be lists of lists where each
+    # inner list represents a single row of the table
+    results = {"scalars":{},"tables":{}}
 
+    # count how many users we have
+    results["scalars"]["Unique Usernames"]=User.objects.filter().count()
+    results["scalars"]["Activated Usernames"]=User.objects.filter(is_active=1).count()
+    
+    # count how many enrollments we have
+    results["scalars"]["Total Enrollments Across All Courses"]=CourseEnrollment.objects.count()
+
+    # establish a direct connection to the database (for executing raw SQL)
     from django.db import connection
     cursor = connection.cursor()
-    results = []
 
-    for query in queries:
-        cursor.execute(query)
-        results.append(dictfetchall(cursor))
+    # define the queries that will generate our user-facing tables
+    # table queries need not take the form of raw SQL, but do in this case since
+    # the MySQL backend for django isn't very friendly with group by or distinct
+    table_queries = {}
+    table_queries["course enrollments"]= \
+        "select "+ \
+        "course_id as Course, "+ \
+        "count(user_id) as Students " + \
+        "from student_courseenrollment "+ \
+        "group by course_id "+ \
+        "order by students desc;"
+    table_queries["number of students in each number of classes"]= \
+        "select registrations as 'Registered for __ Classes' , "+ \
+        "count(registrations) as Users "+ \
+        "from (select count(user_id) as registrations "+ \
+               "from student_courseenrollment "+ \
+               "group by user_id) as registrations_per_user "+ \
+        "group by registrations;"
 
-    return HttpResponse(json.dumps(results, indent=4))
+    # add the result for each of the table_queries to the results object
+    for query in table_queries.keys():
+        cursor.execute(table_queries[query])
+        results["tables"][query] = SQL_query_to_list(cursor, table_queries[query])
+
+    context={"results":results}
+
+    return render_to_response("admin_dashboard.html",context)
diff --git a/lms/templates/admin_dashboard.html b/lms/templates/admin_dashboard.html
new file mode 100644
index 0000000000..6a903a3f94
--- /dev/null
+++ b/lms/templates/admin_dashboard.html
@@ -0,0 +1,44 @@
+<%namespace name='static' file='static_content.html'/>
+
+<%inherit file="main.html" />
+
+<section class="container about">
+
+  <section class="basic_stats">
+
+    <div class="edx_summary">
+      <h2>edX-wide Summary</h2>
+      <table style="margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;width:50%">
+      % for key in results["scalars"]:
+        <tr>
+          <td>${key}</td>
+          <td>${results["scalars"][key]}</td>
+        </tr>
+      % endfor
+      </table>
+    </div>
+
+    % for table in results["tables"]:
+    <br/>
+    <div class="table_display">
+      <h2>${table}</h2>
+      <table style="margin-left:auto;margin-right:auto;width:50%">
+        <tr>
+          % for column in results["tables"][table][0]:
+          <td><b>${column}</b></td>
+          % endfor
+        </tr>
+        % for row in results["tables"][table][1:]:
+        <tr>
+          % for column in row:
+          <td>${column}</td>
+          % endfor
+        </tr>
+        % endfor
+      </table>
+
+    </div>
+    % endfor
+  </section>
+</section>
+