Georgia Southern pilots student-initiated FERPA waivers – and grows FERPA connections by 25%!
Georgia Southern University prides itself on innovation, collaboration, and academic excellence. The team at the more than 26,000 student public institution, with campuses in Statesboro, Savannah, and Hinesville, GA, knew that families were part of the story.
The Georgia Southern team wanted a modern, user-friendly place to host Family Weekend registration, Parent & Family Association membership purchases, and general information to engage families in the Georgia Southern community.
In April 2022, Georgia Southern launched CampusESP for Family Communication. Amy Smith, Associate Vice President of Enrollment Management, said “Vendors tell you, ‘oh we’ll get you up and running in this short amount of time and you won’t have to do anything…’ and that’s never the case. But with CampusESP, it actually was!”
After seeing the ease of engaging families and reporting results — plus the positive response from families —Georgia Southern knew they could do more. In January 2023, they expanded to CampusESP for Student Enrollment (to engage prospective families) and CampusESP for FERPA Management (to modernize their FERPA processes), this strengthening the collaboration between Enrollment Management, the Office of the Registrar, Admissions, and New Student & Family Programs.
While Georgia Southern has embraced CampusESP, they’ve also challenged us to improve our product. Georgia Southern requested we add student-initiated FERPA waiver functionality (in addition to our existing parent-initiated FERPA waivers) ... and then became the first school to launch it in November 2023! For piloting a new feature – and always innovating with CampusESP – we’re excited to celebrate Georgia Southern University as our ESP MVP for Q1 2024!
Modernizing FERPA processes: From homegrown systems to CampusESP
Georgia Southern previously managed FERPA waivers through homegrown custom tables and screens in their SIS, Ellucian Banner. They wanted to move to a more security system — and they liked that CampusESP gave families their own place to view data (without logging into their student’s accounts), while giving students the autonomy to grant permission to more granular records.
Georgia Southern launched FERPA Management in May 2023 with tiles displaying Credit Hours, Holds, Financial Aid, Account Balance, and GPA information to families. In the first year, families clicked on the tiles over 28,000 times, with the most clicks on Account Balance and Credit Hours. The least clicked tile was actually GPA data. Despite what many believe, parents want to do more than micromanage grades — they truly want to support student success.
The Registrar’s Office has now deprecated their FERPA screens in Banner, and they process all waivers through CampusESP. Georgia Southern currently has over 500 faculty and staff members using CampusESP to verify FERPA waivers when discussing student information with families.
Only one thing was missing…
Giving students the option to grant FERPA waivers
When Georgia Southern first launched FERPA Management, parents had to initiate the FERPA waiver process. Soon, Georgia Southern requested the ability to support student-initiate connections, so students could proactively grant their parents access to their records. CampusESP recognized the need and started developing it.
Once the feature was built, they couldn’t wait. Georgia Southern worked with CampusESP to enable the feature in only 6 days. And it was easy. The only process change on Georgia Southern’s side was to write help guides for students — and the Office of the Registrar completed that task with ease, just in time for Spring Orientation.
Wallace Brown, the University Registrar said, “With student-initiated connections, the challenge of trying to connect the supporter with the student was made easier. Instead of relying on just one person to initiate the connection, there are now two paths that a connection can be made for a student's FERPA waiver.”
25% of all Georgia Southern FERPA connections are student-initiated
Within three months of launching this feature, students have initiated nearly 500 connections — increasing the total number of FERPA waivers by 25%! Thanks to Spring Orientation programming, Georgia Southern was able to encourage students to sign into CampusESP and grant FERPA waivers, if they desired.
Mike Smith, Associate Director of New Student and Family Programs, will continue to grow FERPA connections by prompting both students and parents to grant and request their desired waiver permissions throughout the summer, while both parties are engaged in Orientation programming. “One of the most common questions we get is ‘How can I access my students' records?’. With many families having easy access to student data during high school, the college transition is a big change for them,” said Smith.
To make that transition process as easy as possible, Georgia Southern has linked directly to CampusESP in both their student and faculty/staff portals, so that members of the Georgia Southern community can access FERPA data through the same gateway as before. “We dedicate an entire Orientation session to how families can gain FERPA access in CampusESP. We understand the importance of this for our supporters, and we try to make the process as smooth as possible,” Smith commented.
Thank you to Georgia Southern for always innovating with CampusESP, and congratulations on winning our Q1 2024 ESP MVP Award! We always aim to build new features that customers love, and we look forward to watching your student-initiated FERPA connections grow!