Anyone working with personally identifiable student educational records or students.  

Eligible student is defined by anyone 18 years of age OR enrolled at the institution.  Is the individual enrolled at the University of Iowa? If yes, they are covered by FERPA.

For more information on how to complete FERPA training, please visit our Faculty and Staff FERPA Training page.

FERPA permits disclosure of education record information without the student's consent to school officials who have a legitimate educational interest in the information. A school official has a legitimate educational interest if the official needs to review an education record in order to fulfill their professional responsibility.

The demonstrated "need to know" by those officials of an institution who act in the students' educational interest, including faculty, administration, clerical and professional employees, and other persons who manage student record information including student employees and agents.

Ask yourself:  "Do you need that information to do your job?  Would your colleagues agree?"

Faculty members are considered school officials as defined by FERPA. Faculty members are given access to class and grade rosters as well as to current advisee information. Beyond this, faculty members must demonstrate a legitimate educational interest in order to receive additional student-record access.  Any person with access to student records, regardless of title or status, should consider educational need to know before accessing a record.  Just because you CAN, doesn't mean you SHOULD.

At the University of Iowa, most faculty only have access to their own class rosters.  Faculty who serve as advisors or work with course offerings may be granted student record access and can view all students.  As with any access permitted, just because you can access records, does not mean you should access them.  Regardless, faculty should not view student records to view past performance.  Past performance may be of interest to the faculty member, but it is not a legitimate educational interest needed to perform current job functions.

If prerequisite checking is an issue, faculty should work with their department administrator to either have prerequisites checked through the course library or have administrative staff assign special permission.

It depends.

If there is an academic records consent form filled out by the student for the parent or third party to discuss either  "All of my University of Iowa education records," or "Academic Standing and Status," then you may share probation status with the requester.  

If no written consent is given by the student, faculty and staff can only share non-restricted directory information with parents or other third parties.  The University of Iowa does not consider probation status directory information, therefore it cannot be shared.

Information or data is deemed 'Personally Identifiable' if it includes:

1. Student name
2. Name of the student parent(s) or other family member(s)
3. Student or family address
4. Personal identifiers such as social security number, student ID number, and biometric record
5. Indirect identifiers such as the student date of birth, place of birth, and mother's maiden name
6. Other information that, alone or in combination, is linked to a specific student that would allow a reasonable person in the school community who does not have personal knowledge of the relevant circumstance to identify the student with reasonable certainty
7. Information requested by a person who the educational agency or institution reasonably believes knows the identify of the student to whom the education records relates

Items 6 and 7 probably best answer this question.  Information is considered personally identifiable if an individual could identify the student by process of elimination with reasonable certainty.  Generally, demographics are considered personally identifiable if the identified population is less than 6 students.

In short, an educational agency or institution may disclose personally identifiable information from an education record to appropriate parties, including parents of an eligible student, in connection with an emergency if knowledge of the information is necessary to protect the health or safety of the student or other individuals. However, it is important to determine if the situation is a true emergency/crisis before releasing information. If you are unsure, you may instead decide to contact the student and instruct them to contact the family member without disclosing any information from the education record.

An educational agency or institution may take into account the totality of the circumstances pertaining to a threat to the health or safety of a student or other individual. If the agency or institution determines that there is an articulable and significant threat to the health or safety of a student or other individuals, it may disclose information from education records to any person whose knowledge of the information is necessary to protect the health and safety of the student or other individuals. If, based on the information available at the time of determination, there is a rational basis for the determination, the Department of Education will not substitute its judgment for that of the educational agency or institution in evaluating the circumstances and making a determination.

If a parent requests information about their student's records, administrators should start by looking for a Student Record Request Form in MAUI.  This is located under the student's records, within the Registrar area of MAUI.  Within this form the student has the ability to grant a permission for school officials to provide specified written or oral student record information to third parties.  A authorization code is included in the form to provide the school official a way to verify the identity of the third party.   

A new form is only needed, if the previous form for the third party has expired.