Is there a way of letting parents know that trouble is looming?
The best way, of course, is for parents to ask their students–who may or may not be in a position fully to respond. Parents could call either the Director of Academic Advising or the Associate Director for First-Year Advising and–within the limitation of privacy laws–they would try to ascertain how things are going. The “Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act” (FERPA) strictly limits to whom WPI can provide information with respect to student grades. Please see our FERPA policy Web page for our statement on these matters. Generally, by law no one at WPI has the right to respond to a request in any form to release information on student academic progress unless that student has given permission for that release. However, unless a student specifies in writing he or she is not a dependent and wants no communications sent home, WPI interprets FERPA to mean we can contact parents under certain conditions, listed below. There are grade release forms in the academic advising that studen
