Resources

Please visit Dartmouth's FERPA Tutorial to learn more about maintaining the confidentiality of student data and to gain a basic understanding of the rules governing release of student information at Dartmouth College.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) (20 U.S.C. § 1232g; 34 CFR Part 99) is a 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 Dartmouth Information Security Policy and DISC (Dartmouth Information Security Committee) Policy contained therein are key tools for governing data.

The Access to User-Related Electronic Information at Dartmouth policy sets out guidelines and processes for Dartmouth's Access to User-Related Electronic Information stored in or transmitted through any Dartmouth System.

The Office of Institutional Research (OIR) provides timely and accurate analytical services and information, both to our internal and external constituents, for executive decision making and policy development. To this end, OIR accesses and curates institutional data for reporting or analysis, some of which is available in the following places:

Interactive Fact Book - includes data on students, faculty, staff, and other institutional information

Common Data Set - includes basic information about Dartmouth

Survey Research - OIR administers and/or coordinates surveys on a wide-range of topics important to the Dartmouth community. Certain surveys are conducted in conjunction with outside consortia and generate results with external benchmarking; others are conducted independently. Many of these surveys are administered on a fairly regular basis and target various Dartmouth populations, including students, faculty, staff, alumni and parents.

Electronic Records Management Guidance - The Records Management team provides guidance and support to faculty and staff to help ensure that College electronic records are created, maintained, disseminated and destroyed in a manner consistent with legal and regulatory requirements, industry standards, and College policies.

An electronic record is any record that is created, received, maintained and/or stored on on-premise servers and/or in College-managed cloud services, regardless of the application used to create that record. Examples of electronic records include, but are not limited to, electronic mail, word processing documents, spreadsheets, and databases.