Compliance Training

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA), as amended (sometimes referred to as the Buckley Amendment), is a federal law that protects the privacy of education records of all students enrolled in schools beyond the high school level. Schools are required to maintain that privacy, primarily by restricting release of records and the access provided to those records. Any educational institution that receives funds under any program administered by the U.S. Secretary of Education is bound by FERPA requirements. Institutions that fail to comply with FERPA may have funds administered by the Secretary of Education withheld. The U.S. Department of Education maintains a website with information about FERPA.

The University of San Diego’s Office of the Provost, Department of Human Resources, and the Compliance Committee recently came together to discuss FERPA’s impact on various employee positions and to ensure that all employees (including faculty, administrators, staff, and students) are in compliance with this important federal law. The outcome of that collaboration was a new FERPA training assignment that was issued in March of 2017 via our third-party training vendor, Lawroom.

Any employees who have completed FERPA training since March of 2017 have met their requirement until our retraining cycle in 2021. All new employees (including faculty, administrators, staff, and students) are required to complete this training.

New Employees

At this time -- while we are working with ITS and our third-party vendor, Lawroom, to automate the process by which new employees are added to the Lawroom system -- we in HR execute a weekly manual process by which all employees are uploaded to Lawroom.

Please note that this process is not immediate. First, an employee must submit his or her new hire paperwork to HR. HR then processes this paperwork, typically in a 2-3 day window. During this time, the employee must claim his or her USDOne credentials, since the FERPA training is issued via email. (Instructions for claiming a USDOne account can be found here.) After the paperwork is processed and USDOne credentials are established, HR can issue the FERPA training to the new employee via an automated email from the Lawroom system.

Please note that this process takes place twice a week.

Three important notes:

• In accordance with California Wage and Labor laws, employees will not be issued this training before they officially begin work at the University.
• Faculty who have not received their teaching contracts should contact their academic department for assistance.
• Supervisors of Graduate Assistants and Teaching Assistants who aren't paid via Human Resources should contact hrlearning@sandiego.edu for a different enrollment process.

Logging in to Lawroom

1. Visit the Lawroom website.
2. In the log-in field, enter your USD credentials, not full email (e.g. "johnsmith" rather than “johnsmith@sandiego.edu”).
3. In the password field, enter the same password that you use for your USD email.
4. Click My Courses and then the Open Course Assignments tab. Locate the FERPA training and Begin Course.

Completion Records

Upon completion of the online FERPA training, employees will receive a certificate of completion. This certificate can be printed and provided to the Registrar's Office if needed to gain access to University systems.

Some supervisors may prefer to collect or track these certificates, but please note that employees are not required to submit their certificates to HR, as HR can access the Lawroom system to verify all employees’ completion statuses.

How to Print a Certificate of Completion:

1. Log in to Lawroom.
2. In the log-in field, enter your USD credentials, not full email (e.g. "johnsmith" rather than “johnsmith@sandiego.edu”).
3. In the password field, enter the same password that you use for your USD email.
4. Click My Courses and then the Completed Courses tab. Locate the FERPA training and click Completion.