FERPA for Faculty

CSULB complies with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA) which affords students certain rights with respect to their education records. The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) also known as the “Buckley Amendment,” was established to protect the privacy of students. Educational records include grades, transcripts, student's class schedules, graded work, student emails, advising records, and other educational records with personally identifiable information.

Access to student records and other confidential information is granted to authorized faculty and staff for official university business only. 

CSULB offers Data Security and FERPA training through the CSU Training website, available in Single Sign-On.

In compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), which affords students certain rights with respect to their education records, CSULB follows specific processes for posting of grades.

The public posting of grades, either by the student’s name, CSULB ID number, or social security number, is a violation of FERPA.

  • This includes the posting of grades to a class or institutional website or online data repositories, via online communications (including social media), or in hallways or departmental offices.
  • This applies to all students, including those taking virtual and distance education courses.
  • Numeric student identifiers are considered personally identifiable information and therefore violate FERPA.

The posting of grades must be in accordance with campus and security policies. Although grades may be posted on CANVAS for students to access, final grade submission is completed via the MyCSULB Faculty Center (PeopleSoft), which is the official system of record. Once submitted, grades are posted to our secure student information system the following business day for students to access via MyCSULB Student Center and are considered the official final grades. For instructions, refer to How to Submit Final Grades.

While notifying individual students of their individual grade(s) via email is generally considered permissible under FERPA, it is highly discouraged. Remember to only share unique grade information with the intended individual student only--do not email grades as part of a list or group announcement.

Your email application may autocomplete recipients' names and email addresses. Be sure to verify that the information entered is for your intended recipient so that your email is not sent to the wrong recipient.

Instead of attaching a file containing student record information, it is recommended that you share the file using CSULB's secured servers or campus-approved cloud storage. For instructions, see How to Protect and Share Files.

Campus Legal Guidelines for Email Service and Usage

Students should not be allowed access to other students' graded work. Graded work should not be returned to students in a manner that requires students to sort through other students' work to find their own. Do not return graded work by placing it in an unmonitored area for students to collect.

When working from home, you must prevent disclosure of student's education records to other individuals in their household, including family members.

  • Class attendance and/or participation are restricted to officially enrolled CSULB students and visiting students whose names are on the instructor's class roster.
  • Individuals who are not enrolled are discouraged from observing virtual classrooms in the event that personally identifiable information from a student's educational record is, in fact, disclosed in the virtual classroom.
  • If meeting with a student when personally identifiable information may be disclosed (such as when meeting for academic advisement or to discuss an assignment), make sure that other members of your household cannot overhear your discussion.
  • FERPA does not prevent you from taking student education records home if needed to complete your work. However, you must use reasonable methods to protect those records.

When recording lectures, such as in Zoom, please follow these guidelines:

  • Faculty should inform all students in their classes that the session will be recorded. Faculty must offer appropriate accommodations to participants who choose not to be recorded.
  • Only faculty and enrolled students should have access to view recorded class settings. Recordings may be shared via CANVAS. Recordings will be erased after the final exam.
  • If students do not want their likeness or image included in the recording (that will be made and available for classmates to view) they must let the instructor know and may elect not to participate via video recording.
  • Students have a right to not have their comments in class disclosed to others who are unconnected with the class, but the faculty members and their classmates may hear their questions and comments without violating FERPA.

CSU Virtual Learning Student Privacy Rights FAQ