FERPA: Can a committee request the name of the student with the highest grade point average of a certain cohort to award the student at an awards banquet?

If the committee requesting the information consists of employees from your institution, you should be fine providing the information to them under the “school official” exception to signed consent, which can be found in detail in §99.31(a)(1)(i). However, if the committee is not comprised entirely of employees at your institution, you have two options available. If you have an “honors and awards” category in your directory information, you could provide the name or names, absent the specific GPA, to the committee. If you have any question about directory information in particular, reference §99.37. Alternatively, you can obtain written consent from the student to disclose this information to the committee.