Standard College strives to protect the status of its students, staff and employees during a major disaster while maintaining business continuity. Crisis and emergency management preparation is an critical function for the college. Standard College will mitigate the impact of crisis situations and operational disruptions on its campus community by implementing plans that provide for continuity of operations in cases of a catastrophic event. The college maintains and adheres to specific policies and procedures regarding crisis situations, catastrophic events and program discontinuances in order to minimize the length of time that students’ educational activities are disrupted and, when applicable, minimize the length of time that students are displaced. The college defines a catastrophic event as a sudden, natural, or man-made, situation where change and destruction occur (e.g. floods, hurricanes, earthquakes, tornadoes, fire, etc.).
To facilitate the effectiveness and efficiency of operations during emergencies and adverse conditions (e.g., pandemics, inclement weather, etc.), the CEO/President shall have the authority to adopt temporary policies or to amend or suspend existing policies for the duration of the emergent event. If the CEO/President is unable to exercise this authority, she has designated individuals in priority order as authorized to declare a state of emergency.
Continuity of Operations
The college leverages highly available educational technologies such as POPULI to minimize the likelihood of noticeable service interruption. Further, Standard College policies and procedures ensure that systems are protected from vulnerabilities, adequately secured, and backed up to prevent record destruction and/or data loss. The college utilizes cloud backup services to store and protect data. This includes an online managed backup service that provides the college with a system for the backup, storage, and recovery of computer files. Backups are performed on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis. This is a cost-effective, secure, and scalable backup solution that protects and stores enterprise-wide college data.
Policies Ensuring Continuity of Operations & Emergency/Crisis Response
The following Standard College policies and procedures are also intended to help mitigate the impact of emergency events on university operations:
- Academic Records Policy provides guidance for ensuring the integrity, confidentiality, and security of all documents and records created, received or maintained in the course of college academic activity.
- Refund Policies provide guidance for ensuring that financial refunds are processed timely and consistently and in accordance with Standard College policy, and applicable federal, state and accreditation requirements.
In the event that a catastrophic event occurs, the university maintains the authority to enact additional financial refunds to students that are deemed appropriate during such circumstances.
Emergency Communications Systems and Methods
Standard College uses several different systems and methods of communication to alert students, faculty, staff, and others of a significant emergency.
- Mass emails to students, staff, and faculty Populi accounts
- Text alerts to mobile phones through the “Generals Alerts” on Populi
- Updates and posting further information to the Standard College Website (http://standardcollege.edu)
Program Discontinuances
In the unlikely event that Standard College cannot deliver the instruction for which students have enrolled, the college commits to one or more of the following courses of action:
- Providing a reasonable alternative for delivering instruction and/or services for which students have paid.
- Providing reasonable financial refund for the education students did not receive.
Standard College students will be notified by the college administration about their options. In accordance with institutional accreditation requirements, a teach-out plan will be submitted to the Accrediting Bureau of Health Education Schools (ABHES) prior to its implementation.
