About FERPA Release Forms

Why consider completing a FERPA release?

Unexpected circumstances can make it difficult for you to contact the College or manage time-sensitive academic and financial matters yourself. Having a release on file may allow someone you trust to communicate with SMCC on your behalf during situations such as:

• A hospitalization, medical emergency or extended illness
• An unexpected trip or prolonged absence
• A family emergency
• Military service or deployment
• Limited access to a phone, email or the internet
• Another circumstance that temporarily prevents you from managing your College-related affairs

A FERPA release may be especially helpful when deadlines, registration, financial aid, billing or other important student matters require attention.
Without your authorization, SMCC generally cannot disclose information from your education records to another person, including a parent, spouse, partner or family member.

You remain in control.

Completing a FERPA release does not give another person control over your education or automatically allow that person to make decisions for you.

You choose:

• The person who may receive information
• The categories of information SMCC may share
• How long the authorization remains active

You may review or update your authorization through Anthology Student.

How to add an authorized person.

• Log in to the MySMCC portal
• Open the Anthology Student Portal

• Select My Profile from the left-hand menu

• Select My FERPA

• Select Add Person
• Enter the person’s contact information and relationship to you
• Select the categories of information you authorize SMCC to share
• Review and submit the form

Choose your authorized person carefully.

Select someone you trust to handle your information responsibly. Before adding the person, consider discussing:

• Why you are granting access
• What information you are authorizing SMCC to share
• When the person should contact the College
• How long you want the authorization to remain active

Important Information

A FERPA release permits SMCC to share the information you authorize. It does not:

• Provide access to your MySMCC username or password
• Authorize someone to impersonate you
• Automatically grant legal or financial decision-making authority
• Replace a power of attorney, health care directive or other legal document
• Guarantee that every requested action can be completed by the authorized person

Never share your SMCC login credentials with anyone.