“Legal Briefs” appears in e-Inside to keep faculty and staff informed of legal issues and their implications. An archive of past Legal Briefs is available online.

How much do you know about the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)? If your job at Kent State deals with student information, you should be familiar with the provisions of the federal law that protects the privacy of student education records. The law applies to all schools that receive funds under an applicable program of the U.S. Department of Education.

The Office of the General Counsel will sponsor a two-hour workshop, FERPA 101: What You Need to Know, on Friday, Oct. 26. The workshop will be held at 10 a.m. in Room 340 Franklin Hall on the Kent Campus.

During the seminar, representatives from the General Counsel and the Registrar’s Offices will provide an overview of what faculty and staff need to know about FERPA, including:

• The definition of an “educational record” and who can access it,
• The type of records that can be released with a student’s permission,
• The type of records that can be released without a student’s permission, and
• How to handle requests for student information.
  

If you have any specific questions you would like answered on this topic, please send them to legal@kent.edu prior to Oct. 26.

Registration for the seminar is required and the program will be streamed live to all Kent State locations. Registration information is available at www.kent.edu/generalcounsel/seminars.cfm. The link to the live stream will be posted on this website on the morning of the workshop.

Questions should be directed to Nichole DeCaprio at 330-672-2982 or ndecapri@kent.edu.