THEVERMONTCYNIC THE Issue 8 - Volume 136 | October 15, 2019 | vtcynic.com
Who controls your privacy? We, the undersigned faculty, call on the administration to suspend immediately all faculty and staff access to the Navigate advising platform.
• The system as currently configured provides too much information too broadly.
Currently, in Navigate faculty are provided not only with a roster of students in their classes but also with access to information about each student’s transcript, GPA, advising notes, home address, phone number, demographic information such as “first generation college student,” tuitiuon and fees “balance past due,” past academic alerts, current academic alerts for other classes and calendar of campus service appointments.
Moreover, under the current configuration, even faculty using the system for legitimate purposes may inadvertently see information that can cause adverse effects for students, including unconscious bias. Excerpts from the faculty letter to UVM administration
Students left in the dark over who has access to their data at UVM Julianne Lesch jlesch@uvm.edu
Sawyer Loftus news@vtcynic.com
Professor Alex Zakaras said he felt uncomfortable when he could see detailed communications about his advisee’s mental health through the new Navigate advising system. He said he felt he shouldn’t have been able to see that. Zakaras, a political science professor, is one of more than 80 faculty members that signed a Sept. 26 letter asking for UVM administration to review the new advising system, Navigate. The software is owned by a company called the Education Advisory Board. Previously, UVM used a system
called Banner. In the letter, addressed to key members of the UVM administration including President Suresh Garimella, faculty members stated they were concerned with the potential bias that access to this information may bring. “Under the current configuration, even faculty using the system for legitimate purposes may inadvertently see the information that can cause adverse effects for students, including unconscious bias,” the letter stated. The contract for this new system was signed in October 2017. Two years later, UVM faculty members raised concerns over how much student information is available to them under this new system.
The University elected to sign on with EAB for the Navigate system to address three concerns, according to a UVM webpage about the project: • Enhance the student experience • Create effective and efficient practices in advising • Improve retention and graduation rates The online interface provided for campus advisers the following, according to the website: • Quickly access student information designed to guide advising conversations • Identify discrete problems and initiate early interventions • Proactively refer students to support services • Utilize timely, multi-modal means of communication for
reaching subsets of students • Access data mining capabilities and predictive analytics to guide initiatives Two years, and over $400,000 spent on the contract later, the University has said it is now doing an “assessment” to determine if the faculty concerns are warranted. In the meantime, the Student Action Committee on the faculty senate has voted in favor of suspending the use of the system until faculty concerns are addressed. At the same time, SGA has begun its own inquiry.
Navigate cont. on pages 6-7