Faculty Legal Concerns
A number of overlapping legal issues affect faculty as they work through their day to day job responsibilities. This page offers a short summary of some of those topics, with links to where to find more information on the topics. In some instances, we will be relying (with permission) upon materials created by our colleagues at other universities.
As an employee of the institution, a faculty member is an agent of CUA. In many instances, the law makes no distinction between you and the institution. Your actions or failure to act may be attributed to the university.
At the same time, students are granted certain rights, including rights to legal process. These rights are spelled out in the Student Handbook, on the CUA Policies Page, in the Announcements, and in other miscellaneous documents. In order to protect your academic decisions from challenge, keep in mind these two rules:
****A student (or his or her attorney) is more likely to attack the process by which a decision was made than the substantive decision itself.
****You should be just as diligent in following the process by which a decision is made as you are in making the substantive decision itself.
There are a number of resources here are CUA to help you make the right decisions about issues that arise during your time here at CUA.
Research Compliance
The Associate Provost for Research, Ralph Albano, is the starting point for any questions related to research at the university. The Office of Sponsored Programs web page contains is a good starting point for submission of proposals for research support, acceptance of awrads, administration of internal funding of research, and coordination of university research and technology development. Other Research resources include a summary of the laws that impose compliance responsibilities on a research university.
Student Record Privacy
The single most important step you can take to ensuring student record privacy is to read the CUA Student Records Policy. The law that governs this area is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, also known as FERPA. A lengthy Question and Answer page will give you ideas on some of the questions you might be facing on FERPA. If you have not had FERPA training, please sign up with the Registrar's Office. Contact Benton@cua.edu to find out the next scheduled session. FERPA Resources, Forms and Checklists as well as a chart on release of student records is also helpful. If you use Turnitin as a plagiarism detection tool, be sure to review the rules on what must be done before submitting a paper and review the FERPA limitations on asking a student to submit papers directly.
Copyright
An overview of copyright law is a good place to start if you have questions about the basic lay out and design of copyright law. The media has been good about keeping up with all of the battles over Mp3 downloading and other issues, but reading the quick recap above can provide helpful context. The Office of General Counsel web page on Copyright has much of the current information. Know your Copyrights, a brochure published by the ARL is helpful as you seek to create handouts for students. The What you can Do Chart is especially helpful. The OGC publication Making Copies provides a step by step checklist on creating copies for educational use. The Copyright Policy and Guidelines are also critical documents for compliance purposes. The CUA Bookstore (through XanEdu) can create coursepacks, including electronic coursepacks, with all the copyrights cleared, as long as enough lead time is given to the Bookstore.
Reasonable Accommodations for Students with Disabilities
Student Life and Safety Issues
Resource for this web page: Legal Issues for College Faculty, Lawrence J. Miltner, General Counsel, Cuyahoga Community College
links updated 6/4/08 rab
Last Revised 04-Jun-08 11:20 AM.
