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BUSINESS STRUCTURE
Beyond Graduate School (“Beyond Grad School”) is part of the Center for Graduate Career Success, incorporated in Colorado. Beyond Grad School’s mission is to prepare master’s students for career and job search success. We partner with educational institutions to prepare master’s students to maximize their education and training so that they can build meaningful and impactful careers.
Beyond Grad School maintains offices in Canada to deliver services and programs for Canadian institutions.
OWNER OF BEYOND GRADUATE SCHOOL
Beyond Graduate School is owned and operated by L. Maren Wood, Ph.D. (the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill). Beyond Grad School’s team knows first-hand how difficult it is for graduate students to access the resources and mentorship they need to careers after graduation. In building Beyond Grad School, they leverage their research, expertise, and personal experience to help master’s students and launch their next great careers.
HOW BEYOND GRAD SCHOOL EARNS AND SPENDS MONEY
Beyond Grad School is funded by subscriptions to programs and platforms, ticket sales to annual online conferences, and sponsorships. There are no outside investors, shareholders, or funding.
Over 90% of Beyond Grad School’s revenue provides income for individual employees, contractors, and contributors. The balance sustains marketing and business development; developing, hosting, and maintaining platforms; and delivering effective programming.
PRIVACY AND USER DATA
Beyond Grad School takes great care to only collect essential information about its users and audiences to reach them, deliver services and programming, and efficiently operate its platforms.
Beyond Graduate School training platform
Our training platform is available by institutional or individual subscription. Users are limited to the individual students, postdocs, faculty, and staff of subscribing institutions, or individuals who purchase their own subscriptions. Beyond Grad School’s team and contractors create and maintain the platform. There are no third-party users on the platform.
Users are presented with the Terms of Use and Privacy Policy the first time they access the platform. If any user wishes to have their user history deleted, they can contact Beyond Graduate School team at member@beyondgradshool.com
Beyond Graduate School’s training platform is designed to maximize the privacy of users.
What users can do on this platform
Users can access programs that include on-demand videos to explore career options and learn job search strategies, complete worksheets and exercises in a private note widget, and take quizzes to earn a certificate of completion.
Over time, Beyond Grad School will add additional modules and tools to the platform to further its mission of providing career education and professional development to graduate students.
Beyond Grad School provides a safe learning environment to users. There are no opportunities for users to interact with each other or see other users who are active on the platform; no user can see the activity of, or interact with, other users on the platform.
What Beyond Grad School team sees
The platform is integrated with, and accessed through, an institution’s Single Sign-On portal. The institution authenticates a user, allowing them to access the e-learning platform. The first time a user accesses the platform, a user account is generated using the user’s name and institutional email address.
For individuals who purchase their own subscription, an account is automatically created for you when you pay your tuition. You’ll be sent information on how to login through our portal for individual users.
Through their user account, an individual can track their progress through the programs of study, takes private notes, and completes quizzes.
To understand utilization and detect problems in performance, Beyond Grad School uses Google Analytics and a tracking plugin. These tools show which users are logging in and when, pages users visit, how long users spend on a specific page, devices used to access the platform (phone, laptop, tablet), and which browsers users choose (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc).
When a user completes a quiz or marks a unit as “complete,” it is recorded in the admin panel of the platform and accessible by a Beyond Grad School administrator. Completing a quiz or marking a unit as “complete” is optional.
What Beyond Grad School team does not see
No personal information other than a user’s name and email address is released by subscribing institutions to Beyond Graduate School. Beyond Grad School does not receive demographic information, visa or employment status, or the home department, of a user.
For individual users who purchase their own subscription, your name and email address is passed to the platform, and you will be required to set up a password when you first login.
In terms of user activity on the platform, the Team does not see which videos a user watched or any notes created in the private note taking widget.
How Beyond Grad School uses this information
The Team generates aggregate reports about an institution’s users for designated program administrators. The reports show how many users from an institution accessed the platform, which programs and pages were viewed, and the number of certificates earned. The Team does not share information about individual users without user consent.
Quiz grades are used by the Team to verify a user’s completion of the programs of study in the platform and to issue certifications. The team analyzes aggregate data to understand the efficacy of its programs, improve the functions and content of the platform, and to develop additional programming.
Beyond Graduate School only sends emails to users of the platform to provide information about updates and changes to the platform, to help on-board a user, to recommend resources, invite users to upcoming events, and to collect substantive feedback to improve the platform and develop additional programming.
Beyond Grad School will never sell any information about users to third-parties.
How data from Beyond Graduate School training platform is stored
Beyond Grad School is hosted on a Virtual Private Server and platform data are located and secured with consideration of applicable international standards. (Learn more about VPS here.)
When data is analyzed by the team, user information is anonymized; email addresses and names are removed and replaced with an unidentifying ID number.
Third-Party Providers
Beyond Grad School uses the following third parties to deliver programming, products and services.
Vimeo
All videos embedded in Beyond Grad School platforms and website are hosted on Vimeo. When a viewer watches a video, they are watching that video on vimeo. Learn more about Vimeo’s privacy.
What Beyond Grad School team sees and doesn’t see
Vimeo provides the team with aggregate data via a statistics dashboard. Information Vimeo shares with the team includes: the url of the website or platform the embedded video was accessed from, number of plays a video received, how long viewers watched a video, devices used to access the video (phone, laptop, tablet), and browsers viewers choose (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, etc).
Vimeo never shares individual user data with Beyond Grad School team. Vimeo does not share personal information with the Team about who rents videos.
How Beyond Grad School team uses information from Vimeo
The team analyzes aggregate data provided by Vimeo to refine programming and services to meet the needs of Beyond Graduate School’s audience, in service of its mission.
Beyond Graduate School never sell personal information to any third party.
Zoom
Beyond Grad School hosts live webinars via Zoom webinar. Read Zoom’s privacy policy.
What Beyond Grad School team sees and doesn’t see
Attendee’s share their name and email address when they registers for a webinar or meeting.
Beyond Grad School may ask additional questions when attendees register for a webinar, such as an attendee’s institution, academic rank (graduate student, faculty, postdoc), employment status, and academic area of specialization. Beyond Grad School uses this information to refine programming and reach its targeted audience. We never share personal information with third parties, nor do we provide reporting to institutions.
Webinar attendees are in “attendee-only” mode, which means that the participant’s webcam and mic are disabled. Attendees only participate in the webinar with the host and panellists via text-chat.
The Beyond Grad School team member who hosts the webinar, and guest panellists or speakers, see the names of attendees. Comments or questions an attendee asks in the text chat or Q&A are visible to webinar hosts, panellists, and other attendees. Beyond Graduate School keeps a record of questions and comments shared during the webinar to inform future programming and research.
All webinars are recorded (video and audio); names of attendees, questions, or comments from the chat are not included in the recording.
How Beyond Grad School uses information from Zoom
Webinar attendees are added to Beyond Grad School’s mailing list and begin receiving weekly newsletters. Webinar attendees can opt-out from receiving the newsletter by clicking “unsubscribe” at the bottom of any email campaign.
Beyond Grad School team members analyze questions and comments asked by attendees to understand the needs of graduate students and PhDs, to refine programming, and to create additional content and services to meet the needs of the academic community.
Beyond Grad School never sell personal information to any third party. We may provide aggregate reports to institutions (the number of people who attend our events), but will never report on an individual’s participation.
Stripe
Stripe is a secure payment processing software that Beyond Graduate School uses to manage individual subscriptions to the platform. Read Stripe’s privacy policy.
What Beyond Grad School does and doesn’t see
Stripe shares with Beyond Grad School a subscriber’s name, email address, the last four digits of a member’s credit card, and the expiration date on that card.
Stripe does not share with Beyond Graduate School a member’s address or full credit card information.
How Beyond Grad School uses this information
Beyond Grad School uses information provided by Stripe to assist members with billing issues and to verify a member’s subscription plan to the training platform.
Beyond Grad School never sells personal information to any third party.
Active Campaign
Beyond Grad School send weekly newsletters through Active Campaign to subscribers of its email list. Learn more about Active Campaign and read its privacy policy.
Subscribers to Beyond Grad School’s mailing lists can cancel anytime; simply click the “unsubscribe link” at the bottom of any email campaign.
What Beyond Grad School does see and doesn’t see
Active Campaign provides Beyond Grad School team with analytics about each email campaign, including which subscriber opened an email, and if the subscriber clicked on links included in the email.
How Beyond Graduate School use this information
Beyond Grad School use this information to curate events and resources shared with newsletter subscribers.
Beyond Grad School never sell personal information to any third party.