The analytics environment at UMBC, commonly referred to as REX, is the data warehouse for UMBC. For information on REX, visit the REX history page. REX allows authorized faculty, staff, and institutional researchers to report and analyze UMBC data. While REX is not the System of Record, it is the official reporting platform for UMBC. Any errors found are corrected in the appropriate system of record(s).
What Data We Collect:
Student Records
This information includes all data to maintain your student academic record and produce an official transcript. This includes course registrations, grades, advising information, scholarship and financial aid, tuition payments, programs of study, and degrees and certificates awarded.
Residential Life
This system of record is the StarRez system, data included in REX includes room assignments, roommates, and preference information you provided for assignment of rooms.
myUMBC data
See myUMBC Data.
Teaching & Learning Data
Events & Scheduling
This system of record is the R25 event and scheduling system. Data included in REX includes event or course location and date/time and list of students for courses, or participants in events if registration required.
Career Services
This information includes your career goal, whether a resume is on file, and any job interviews you signed up for.
Financial Records
This information includes budgets, salaries, and operating expenses that can be managed and analyzed based on the financial chart of accounts.
Microcredentials
Many experiential learning programs award micro-credentials following the open badges standard. These micro-credentials are loaded into REX.
How We Use The Data We Collect:
Academic and Administrative Services
Provide the user with quick access to basic information about academic or administrative services including important notifications. Automatically enroll users into relevant groups based on their status.
University Administration and Operations
Provide solutions to university offices for reporting information on the work they are performing. By integrating different data sources UMBC can evaluate the effectiveness of high impact practices on student success.
Planning and Reporting
This data is used by UMBC for management and planning of UMBC initiatives in the strategic plan.
This data is used by Institutional Reporting and Decision Support (IRADS) to produce mandatory reports for the University System of Maryland, Maryland Higher Education Commission, and Department of Education.
Service and Support
The data warehouse provides users with a centralized location to view important data kept in distinct systems.
How Do We Collect Analytics Data:
UMBC Sources
Data is transferred nightly from the PeopleSoft database tables in our Human Resources, Financial, and Student Administration systems through what is referred to as extract, transfer, and load (ETL) processes that were purchased from our vendors, or developed in-house. These ETL processes replicate the data from the source system into the data warehouse in a way that allows different offices supporting specific student groups to track the academic progress of their specific students.
3rd Party Sources
When we use Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) vendors for specific functions (e.g. career services, residential housing management, etc.) we identify important data from that SaaS system that should be added on a regular basis to the data warehouse. The analytics team works with the SaaS vendor to develop an ETL process to load the data from that system into the data warehouse.
How Do We Share This Data:
For all student educational data, UMBC’s privacy policy requires that we have contractual language governing that our data cannot be used for purposes other than supporting the services UMBC has procured and that upon the termination of the contract, all UMBC data must be deleted. As part of each procurement, we evaluate the cybersecurity and privacy practices of the company to ensure that they meet the same security and privacy requirements we would provide if we were running the service internally. For more information, please review the security policy.
UMBC complies with the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). In general, FERPA serves to protect the privacy of student education records. Specifically, FERPA limits the release of any information from a student’s education record without prior written consent from the student. FERPA allows for the disclosure of those records, without consent, to school officials with legitimate educational interests. For more information on FERPA visit: http://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html.
REX is used to share information with 3rd-parties SaaS services or services that UMBC has entered into a contract with to load the eligible students the service supports into the system.
REX is used by IRADS for official data reporting to the USM, Maryland Higher Education Commission, and Federal government and this data is shared with those government entities.
What Actions Can Individuals Take?
We are working to provide individuals, once authenticated, with information from our analytics platform. If you have questions you may submit a service request and we will have someone from our privacy team set up an appointment with you to discuss the data we have collected.
Submit a Privacy Request Form
If you would like to review, correct, or request the deletion of your personal data held by UMBC, or opt-out of third party sharing, please fill out our Privacy Request Form and follow the instructions. This form ensures that your request is processed promptly and in accordance with privacy regulations. Our team will review your submission and respond as soon as possible. For any questions or assistance, please contact our privacy office at privacy@UMBC.edu.
Correcting Mistakes In Your Data:
UMBC, through our Data Management Council, places data integrity, confidentiality, and accuracy of our data as a core requirement. If you discover what you believe are inaccuracies in your record, please contact us through the privacy request form. You will be contacted and we will investigate your issue, and if errors are found, make the corrections.
Can I View All Of My Data Without Making A Request?
At present, no. As we work to fully implement this requirement of the law, we hope to provide this feature first to our current employees and students. Due to the variety of data and different compliance requirements, we want to ensure the request is from the individual, not a hacker who has compromised a password. For current students and employees, we recommend you start with reviewing your myUMBC profile settings which will summarize data from different systems. Please see the myUMBC Data section for how to do this.