Administration

Data from youth programs will remain in LionPATH

As a follow-up to concerns raised this summer regarding access by faculty and staff to data from participants in youth programs offered by Penn State, the University conducted a comprehensive investigation of minors’ data available to faculty and staff.

After thorough review by Project LionPATH and the Office of Ethics and Compliance — in conjunction with general counsel and the Noncredit Steering Committee — it was determined that LionPATH will continue to house the data and restrict access to the information to only users who have a business need to see the data. LionPATH is Penn State’s new, student information system that officially went into service this year.

A statement on all youth program registration forms also will alert parents and guardians that registering in a youth program will result in a University record being created that will be securely maintained according to Penn State’s record retention schedule.

In February 2016, Penn State student data was transferred from the former student information system (ISIS) into LionPATH. As part of the transition, the data of minors who participated in some of the noncredit youth programs offered by Penn State was included in this conversion.

The data transferred into LionPATH contained first and last name, gender, birth month and date. If an email address was available, it was also included. Since the year of birth was not available, the information that was viewable only by faculty and staff does not meet the definition of Personally Identifiable Information outlined in University Policy AD53—Privacy Policy. The search functionality used to access this data in LionPATH is only available to those staff and faculty members assigned an “adviser” role.

Last Updated September 29, 2016