Policy Glossary

Academic advisor: A student’s assigned staff or faculty member who helps and advises students on academic matters, including planning their academic career and selecting classes.
Access information: A username, a password, log-in information, an account name, or any other security information that protects access to a personal electronic account.
Add/Drop period: The time period designated as the 100% refund period.
Administrative Withdrawal: Action taken by the College resulting in the withdrawal of a student from a course, courses, and/or college.
Affinity group: An employee’s constituency group based on their category of employment. The College has three affinity groups: the Administrative Staff Association (ASA), the Faculty Association (FA), and the Support Staff Association (SSA).
Applicant: An individual who has an assigned FCC student identification number and who has submitted a College application for credit enrollment.
Assent: A child’s affirmative agreement to participate in research.
Assignment Grade: The grade assigned by the instruction for a specific task or activity completed in the course.
ATODA: alcohol, tobacco, opioid, and other drug awareness.
Calendar days: Sunday through Saturday of each week excluding days on which the College is officially closed.
Cameron Carden Act of 2024: Mandates that all public universities in Maryland provide formal withdrawal policies that include mental health as a valid reason for student withdrawal. The Act ensures that students who withdraw due to mental or physical health issues receive a refund for the remainder of the term, aiming to protect students' well-being and support their academic success.
CCTV: Closed circuit (non-broadcast) television video monitoring system utilizing an array of cameras and data recording servers.
Census Date: The point in time at which twenty percent of the length of a course or session have elapsed.
Children: Persons under the age of 18.
College closing: The closing of all buildings and offices, cancellation of all in person classes (credit and non-credit), and the cancellation of all in person scheduled non-academic activities and events at both the main campus (including the Carl and Norma Miller Children’s Center) and the Monroe Center (unless otherwise noted in the closing announcement). All virtual classes shall proceed whenever possible during inclement weather closings or delays.
College community: Trustees, students, and all employees of the College as well as any independent contractors or other third parties to the extent articulated under contractual agreements.
College Co-Sponsored Events: Events where Frederick Community College and/or the Frederick Community College Foundation, Inc. partners with outside groups or organizations. All College co-sponsored events must be approved by the President’s Council. Co-sponsorship approval is based upon whether the event is deemed to be beneficial for the College to co-sponsor the event.
College premises: Buildings or grounds owned, leased, operated, controlled, supervised, or temporarily used by the College.
College resources: College premises, property, IT resources, personnel, branding, or funding.
College social media account: Accounts on any social media site specifically made to promote the College, or any related organizations, programs, departments, or activities. This policy does not apply to personal social media accounts used by College employees.
College-sponsored activities: Any activity that is initiated, authorized, or supervised by the College, or that involves representation of the College.
Completion Rate: The percentage of credits (college-level and developmental) completed each semester divided by the number of credits attempted each semester, including summer session.
Controlled substances: Drugs that have some potential for dependence. These drugs are regulated by local, state, and federal laws.
Creative Commons licensing: Licensing that enables creators of copyrighted work to grant permission to others to retain (make and own a copy), reuse (use in a wide range of ways), revise (adapt, modify, and improve), remix (combine two or more), and redistribute (share with others).
Creator: The Creator is the individual who originates a creative work or invention. Depending on the circumstances, the Creator may hold on to the intellectual property rights of the creative work or invention, or the rights may be transferred to the College.
Current Student/Student: An individual who is registered at the College, either full or part-time, in a credit or continuing education class or classes who has either paid or made arrangement for payment of tuition and/or fees.
Deferred Payment Plan: An agreement between a student and a third-party vendor which allows for the payment of tuition and fees to be made in monthly installments.
Designated Personnel: College employees authorized to view and maintain the video monitoring system or having approved access to view selected cameras and/or access to view recorded data.
Drop: An action taken to remove a student from a class within the drop/add period. Classes dropped will not appear on the student’s transcript, will not impact a student’s academic standing, and no tuition and fees will be assessed. Drops within this period may impact financial aid.
Drop for Non-payment: Specific dates throughout the credit registration cycle when students are dropped for non-payment of tuition and fees. Students must have paid tuition and fees in full, have enough financial aid to cover tuition/fees, or be enrolled in the deferred payment plan to avoid the drop zone.
Drug: Any chemical, whether synthetic or natural, that affects the human body or mind when it is swallowed, inhaled, injected, or consumed in any other way.
Education record: Any record maintained by the College or by a party acting for the College that is directly related to a student or students. Education records are subject to the provisions of FERPA...
Emergency conditions: Conditions that, in the determination of the President and Chief of Operations, may put the College community at risk.
Essential personnel: Those employees designated in their job description or by the President as essential to the operation of the College during an identified period of time.
Exigent circumstances: Emergency situations that require law enforcement to act immediately to address a threat to public safety, without pausing to obtain the prior approval from a judge.
Fair Use: The right to use copyrighted materials without consent of the copyright owner, usually for scholarship, teaching, research, or criticism, as stipulated by Section 504(c)(2) of the Copyright Act.
Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA): A federal law protecting the privacy of student education records.
Final Class Grade: The final grade assigned by the instructor and entered on the student’s transcript.
Financial Obligation: Outstanding charges owed to the College.
Financial Service: includes student loans, payment plans, financial aid processing, debt collection, and leasing agreements.
Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA): A Federal law requiring financial institutions to develop, implement, and maintain safeguards to protect customer information.
Grant access: Providing log-in information needed to gain access to a personal electronic account.
Guardian: An individual who is authorized under applicable State or local law to consent on behalf of a child to general medical care.
Human Subject: Law to consent on behalf of a child to general medical care.
Illicit drugs: Drugs which are illegal by state or federal law.
Incidental use of College resources: Normal use of office space and facilities generally available to all College employees, such as libraries, computers, equipment, and support staff and does not involve special College support beyond the limits described in the policy.
Inclement weather: Weather that is normally considered to be related to snow or ice storms, but may include extreme cold temperatures or weather warnings for hurricane or tornado activity.
Individual: A person for whom the College collects PII.
Information technology (IT) resources: Resources that include, but are not limited to, telephones, mobile devices, computers, printers, scanners, servers, networking devices, public access computers, and licensed software and services.
Information technology (IT) users: Anyone accessing College information technology resources.
Informed consent: Living individual about whom an investigator conducting research obtains data through intervention or interaction with the individual, or identifiable information including personally identifiable information.
Intellectual property: The product of creative or scholarly efforts, whether or not protected by patent, copyright, trademark, trade secret laws, contract, or agreement.
Internal College Meetings and Events: Meetings or events that are organized and conducted by College faculty, staff, trustees, or students for College activities/business.
Invention: A new design, process, sequence, methodology, or application of a product, device, process, sequence, or methodology.
Minimal risk: The probability that anticipated harm or discomfort in research is no greater than what is ordinarily encountered in daily life or routine examinations.
Mottos and taglines: Specific phrases associated with the brand of the College, as defined in this policy.
Naloxone: A prescription medicine that reverses opioid overdose.
Name: “Frederick Community College” or “FCC”, and also includes the names of any subunits of the College listed in this policy.
Non-grade based complaint: Any complaint not directly related to the assigning of a final class grade.
Non-permanent records: Public records with temporary value which may be disposed of after the passage of a specified period of time.
Non-Public Personal Information (NPI): Information provided by a customer, another financial institution, otherwise obtained for offering a financial product or service, or FERPA-protected data.
Operating reserves: Amounts that are available for general use.
Opioid: Synthetic substances that act on opioid receptors to produce morphine-like effects.
Parent: A child’s biological, step, or adoptive parent.
Patent: Any work recognized by a national patent office to have been created or invented by the bearer of the patent, alongside the rights and protections granted by ownership of the patent.
Periodic compliance checks: Unscheduled inspections conducted by the appropriate Senior Leader to examine whether safeguards are adequately protecting PII.
Permanent records: Public records which have been appraised by law, statute, rule, agency personnel and/or the State Archivist as having ongoing administrative, fiscal, legal, historical or other archival value.
Personal electronic account: Any account created outside a student’s engagement with the College through an online medium or service that allows users to create, share, or view user-generated content.
Prospective Student: An individual who has become a part of the College recruitment database who has been assigned an FCC student identification number.
Public access computer: Computers provided for public use.
Public record: Any documentary material in any form created or received by the College in connection with the transaction of public business.
Public/Community Use: Paid use of College facilities by individuals, organizations, associations, or businesses not affiliated with Frederick Community College.
Record: Any educational information or data recorded in any medium.
Records officers: The executive staff designated by the President to serve as liaison to the State Archives and oversee the records retention program.
Red Flags Rule: A federal regulation requiring financial institutions to implement a written Identity Theft Prevention Program and provide for its continued administration.
Residency: A student’s domicile at the time of application.
Retroactive Withdrawal: A student-initiated request to the Admissions and Academic Policies Committee to withdraw from a course after the Withdrawal Period.
Seal: The authoritative mark of the College used on official College communications.
Service Provider: Any external entity that receives, stores or processes NPI on behalf of the college.
Short Term Leave of Absence: An institutionally approved period of absence from a course, lasting no longer than twenty percent of the length of a course or session.
Strategic reserves: Amounts designated by the President for a future use on one-time expenses or projects that are not able to be accommodated in any one operating budget year.
Student Athlete: A student who is considered full-time while being included on an active roster or as a red shirt for any NJCAA-sanctioned sport sponsored by the College.
Student Work: Work that is prepared by an FCC student.
Surveillance Center: An area under control of the Director of College Safety, Security, and Emergency Preparedness in which live video footage/data from cameras can be monitored, and recorded video can be viewed.
Systems: Software applications, software platforms, computers, and/or devices.
Temporary video cameras: Cameras that are not permanently installed by the College and can be temporarily deployed by designated Security personnel with appropriate authorization.
Tobacco: Any tobacco-derived or tobacco-simulating products, including cigarettes, electronic cigarettes and vaporizers, cigars and cigarillos, pipe tobacco, hookah smoked products, and oral tobacco.
Trade Secret: Any information that derives independent economic value from not being generally known and is subject to reasonable efforts to maintain secrecy.
Trademark: Any symbol or combination of symbols which serve to identify the commercial source of items marked by the symbol.
Unit: A description on the Records Retention and Disposal Schedule provided by the Maryland State Records Management Division to describe a specific department or functional area.
Video media: Digital camera images obtained and recorded as digital files.
Visitor/guest: Any person who is not a member of the College community who is on College premises.
Volunteer: Individuals who are not members of the College community, but have had background checks and have been officially approved to serve as volunteers at the College.
Vulnerable populations: Human subjects who are likely to be vulnerable to coercion or undue influence and require special treatment with respect to safeguards of their well-being.
Withdrawal: A non-punitive grade process initiated by a student when a class is dropped after the published 100% refund period but before the published last day to withdraw.
Withdrawal period: Refers to the period students can withdraw from a credit course.
Work for Hire: Copyrightable intellectual property deliverable to FCC, prepared by an employee within the scope of employment or produced as a special order or commission.
Workdays: Monday through Friday and does not include weekends, holidays, scheduled breaks, or other days the College is closed.
Years of Service: Employment at the College as a regular full-time or regular part-time employee working 50% or greater.

Last Revised: June 1, 2026