FERPA Q&A

Q: Is it okay to email a student at a personal email address instead of their umn.edu email address?

A: If you are sending any private student information in the message, you need to use the umn.edu email account. This is consistent with the FERPA requirement that schools use reasonable methods to identify and authenticate the identity of a student when disclosing student education records. Because of the authentication on umn.edu accounts, plus our policy language on not sharing login credentials, we can be assured that we are communicating directly with the student when sending information to a umn.edu email account.

While students provide us with personal email accounts, we lack assurances that the account is still theirs or have kept that information up to date in our systems.

However, if you are having trouble reaching a student and have sent multiple emails, it can be a good idea to send a message to a personal email address letting them know more specific details have been sent to their umn.edu account. The message to the personal email account can’t contain any private student information though.