Richard Rainsberger
Director of Admissions and Records
Central Virginia Community College
FERPA in the Digital Age: What You Need to Know

Bio

Richard Rainsberger is Director of Admissions and Records at Central Virginia Community College. He has been a professional college records administrator for 33 years. During 26 of those years, Dr. Rainsberger has had direct responsibility for administering FERPA policy on five different college and university campuses. Since 1986, he has conducted FERPA workshops at the annual meeting of AACRAO (American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers) and for the faculty and staff of more than 20 colleges and universities. He has also presented papers on FERPA for the American Council on Education (ACE), National Association of College and University Attorneys (NACUA), National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators (NASFAA), and for state governmental representatives of Kentucky and Illinois. In 1990, he was appointed chair of the AACRAO committee to revise the AACRAO FERPA Guide. Those efforts have resulted in the widely-acclaimed FERPA Guides of 1995, 1998, and 2001. In 1997, he also published the AACRAO FERPA Guide for Secondary Education. His other current pursuits are evaluating states' open records laws in relation to FERPA, the recently passed federal legislation on digital signatures, and the impact of high technology initiatives on FERPA.