Student Confidentiality and Privacy Policies
The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974 provides, generally, that (1) students shall have the right of access to their educational records, and (2) educational institutions shall not release educational records to non-college employees without consent of the student. Written consent of the student is required before Apollos University can release information concerning the student to prospective employers, government agencies, credit bureaus, etc. Students and alumni applying for jobs, credit, etc., can expedite their applications by providing Apollos University with written permission to release their records, specifying which records and to whom the release should be made. For further details on and exceptions to the policies affecting disclosure of student records, contact the Administrative Office.
Apollos University will comply with GDPR regulations and directives to ensure the protection of all Personally Identifiable Information of European Union data subjects served by the university. Apollos collects only that data which is required by laws, regulations, and standards of the United States Department of Education, the Montana Board of Education, and the Distance Education Accrediting Commission in the execution of our due diligence in serving our students and meeting the rules and expectations of the aforementioned bodies. Apollos does not share PII with entities outside of the university without specific permission from the students. All hardcopy PII is maintained in secure files, accessible only to authorized individuals within the university. Transcripts are maintained indefinitely; however, all other hard-copy PII is destroyed 5 years after graduation. All electronic data is housed within encrypted systems and protected behind firewalls. Apollos systems are housed on remote servers through third-party providers that also complies with GDPR regulations.
Third-party providers such as Merchant Services, PayPal, Certified Public Accountant (CPA), Distant Education Accrediting Commissions (CHEA), etc. are all reviewed to verify they are in compliance with GDPR standards.
Apollos University is committed to ensuring that our website, administrative systems, online classrooms, and internet-based resources are accessible to people with disabilities. It is the goal of Apollos to comply with W3C WAI’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 2.0, Level AA conformance by November 1, 2017. Issues related to web content accessibility should be reported to info@apollos.edu.
The Apollos University Web Accessibility Policy applies to all existing web content on https://apollos.edu/Default.aspx and http://courses.apollos.edu/au/my/. Furthermore, the policy applies to all web content produced or updated by third party content providers and the future selection of third-party providers will be based on accessibility conformance. It is the goal of Apollos to comply with ATAG 2.0 conformance by November 1, 2017 to include, but not limited to, user-generated content.
This policy will be reviewed annually on or before December 31 of each academic year. The policy was last reviewed on June 25, 2018 by the WCAG Compliance Officer.
Apollos University is fully committed to creating an environment and institutional culture which is free from discrimination, including discrimination based on disability, in compliance with Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act and The Americans with Disabilities Act:
Pursuant to the provisions of "Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 (Section 504), a law that prohibits discrimination on the basis of physical or mental disability (29 U.S.C. Section 794) and subsequent legislation; The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 (ADA Title III) is the civil rights guarantee for persons with disabilities and upholds and extends the standards for compliance with Section 504".
Apollos University provides reasonable accommodations to students and employees with disabilities. Reasonable accommodations are modifications to policies, practices or procedures to make Apollos services and programs accessible individuals with a disability, provided these modifications do not fundamentally alter the nature of the service or program. Reasonable accommodations will be made in timely manner and on individualized and flexible basis.
Individual students, faculty, or staff are responsible for identifying themselves as individual with a disability to and submitting accompanying documentation from appropriately licensed professional. Any and all documentation submitted is confidential and shared only on a need to know basis compliant with FERPA.
Requests for reasonable accommodations for disability may be submitted at any time, however it is recommended that students inform Apollos University at the time of enrollment prior to beginning a class. Disclosure of a disability and a request for reasonable accommodation should be made to the Executive Vice President of Academic Affairs (CAO), Robin Westerik at rwesterik@apollos.edu. It is the responsibility of all employees of Apollos who are informed of a disability to request that the student to contact the CAO directly as well as to forward all information disclosed to the CAO.